The increasing use of zero tolerance discipline policies in the USA has led to a "discipline gap," in which minoritized students receive harsher and more frequent suspensions and expulsions than their peers from dominant cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Though disciplinary decisions are made by educators at the school level,…

This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based "interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as "disadvantaged" in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much…

In its advancement towards an education quasi-market, Catalonia has recently been driving the development of "school educational projects" in all schools (both public and private) as a tool to facilitate school autonomy and family choices. A school educational project is a formal document in which schools identify their pedagogical…

Differences in reputation between schools and in classes within schools shape parental choice in the Finnish urban context, even if the differences in school performance and the risks of making a "bad" choice are relatively small. This study analyses the instrumental and expressive orders of schools in a specific educational context. Two…

With the proliferation of choice policies in education, parents are increasingly positioned as "consumers" tasked with choosing the "best" school for their children. Yet a large body of research has shown that the process of selecting a school is far more complicated than policy-makers and researchers often predict. This…

This study explored the moral complexity of student drug and alcohol policies that are often disciplinary, punitive, and exclusionary in nature. The Ethic of the Profession and its Model for Students' Best Interests (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016; Stefkovich, 2013), a professional ethical construct for educational leadership and for school…

The predominant focus in this paper is on issues of school context and, in particular, on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture. Featuring interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, the paper draws on Braun et al's…

Taking recent policy on education and social mobility as a working example, this article examines developments in the mechanisms for realising policy over the past ten years, as indicative of changes in the neoliberal state. This initial analysis suggests that, despite similarities in the process of policy formation before and after the General…

This paper focuses on the dual dependencies apparent at the intersection of the media society and the audit society by empirically exploring and discussing the relationship between Swedish local newspaper coverage and school inspection activities. The research questions pertain to the Inspectorate's media strategy, how inspection is represented…

While it is generally acknowledged that being "historically informed" lies at the heart of critical accounts of education policy-making, the use of historically focused retrospective research methods within the field is rare. This paper makes the case for retrospective research at a time when some of the most significant episodes of…

A foundational understanding within education leadership literature is that education leaders are expected to guide reform efforts within school. This expectation mirrors organizational development literature that describes leaders as individuals who constructively institute change within their organizations. Although leadership and change are…

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…

This paper presents the case of a relatively low-profile policy initiative that has been successively reframed as part of larger policy ensembles within UK schools over a six-year period, and translated during this time at national and school levels. The policy examined is that of study support or out-of-hours learning. The trajectory of this…

This paper starts from the propositions that (a) pedagogy is central to the achievement of socially just education and (b) there are existing pedagogical approaches that can contribute to more socially just outcomes. Given the ostensible commitments of the current English Government to reducing educational inequality and to the importance of…

The Bourdieuian concept of "position-taking" is applied in this analysis of recognition of prior learning (RPL) policy and practice in Australian higher education. Data from institutional documents and participant interviews indicate that, within RPL policy, the universities selectively employ prevailing discourses of "quality"…