The research reported in this article contributes new understandings of systemic change by studying the form of system redesign known in England as "academisation." The data illuminate tensions within the neoliberal policy complex that are surfaced in a single secondary school. Although several studies have described academy conversions…

This paper seeks to elucidate a specific type of charter school. While much has been written about school choice and the expanding charter school segment, a growing and important number of charter schools do not fit in to the common understanding of these schools. Distinct from many of their counterparts, "prestige charter schools" have…

This paper deploys some concepts from the work of Michel Foucault to problematise the mundane and quotidian "practices" of policy translation as these occur in the everyday of schools. In doing that, we suggest that these "practices" are complicit in the formation of and constitution of teacher subjects, and their subjection to…

This paper explores changes to the educational policy-making arena through case study analysis of a Massachusetts law passed in 2012 that limits seniority-based job protections for public K-12 teachers. I use data from interviews with policy stakeholders, observations of public meetings, and policy artifacts to explore struggles over democratic…

This paper explores teachers' resistance against pedagogic reform in South Korea, which was instituted in the form of an in-service teacher certification. Ideas for the reform, Teaching English in English (TEE), were borrowed from "native-English-speaking countries" and implemented without systematic localization, therefore, it was not…

The politics of the later part of the twentieth century have been marked by the emergence of neoliberalism, which has consequently impregnated the global policy climate with neoliberal technologies of government. It is within this political scenario of hegemonic neoliberal discourse that I explore one aspect of school reform in Malta--contrived…

This article proposes a framework for thinking about the ghostly, thus arguing that policy can be understood as a landscape of intersecting and colliding temporalities from which arouse curious workings of barely-there forces, spooky energies and vibrating saturations of affective ambivalences. I present an empirical study of a policy agenda of…

In this paper, we describe one secondary school's radical attempt to rethink the shape and purpose of education for its pupils, and its subsequent return to more traditional methods in the face of pressures of performativity and accountability. Framing our analysis within activity theory and its emphasis on contradiction as a driver for change, we…

This article reports on a study of the value master's students in a principal preparation program placed on a variety of instructional strategies. The aspiring principals completed a survey with fixed-response and open-ended items. The students' most valued class discussions were about how their personal experiences related to the class topic and…

Research on the merit of school tracking policies has long been at the center of heated educational debate. Unfortunately, while the trend in studies looking at tracking in schools has continued, the student perspective has been underutilized in much of this previous research. Recently, however, there has been a surge in research that focuses on…

Following the election of the Conservative--Liberal Democrat UK coalition Government in 2010, there has been an urgent intensification and focus upon early years numeracy and literacy and promoting systematic synthetic phonics. This paper argues that the current narrowing of early years assessment, along with increased inspection and surveillance,…

In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children's rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration is…

Public-private partnerships in education (ePPP) are acquiring increasing centrality in the agendas of international organizations and development agencies dealing with educational affairs. They are designed as an opportunity to correct inefficiencies in the public delivery of education and to mobilize new resources to increase the access to and…

Change initiatives in higher education are frequently guided by an institutional change management program which provides employees with a framework and set of skills to better understand problems and facilitate change at the organisational level. In this paper, we explore employee perceptions of Six Sigma as a tool for facilitating change at one…

Researchers in the field of teaching and learning in higher education have identified concerns with top-down leadership models. Distributed (or shared) leadership approaches may provide more successful engagement with institutional change agendas, and provide more options to reward and recognise staff leading teaching and learning initiatives.…