This paper explores school reform in England under the Conservative-led Coalition government, elected in 2010, through a focus on the changing roles and status of Local Authorities (LAs). The Coalition's stated aim was the development of a "self-improving, school-led" system in which LAs should become "champions for children."…

This paper reflects on the work done at a large UK university to redesign assessment procedures in a way that was intended to contribute to an improvement in assessment literacy for staff. Existing practice was reviewed and showed that changes in assessment processes were needed to make the organization of assessment more consistent and more…

This article traces continuity and change in the governance of British education through the comparison of two ministers, Anthony Crosland and Michael Gove. Taking Maurice Kogan's seminal "The Politics of Education" as the point of departure, the article highlights the role of political ideology in large-scale educational change, taking…

The past five years have seen significant changes to the structures and content of routes to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in this country, and to the balance of contributions to these routes between schools and higher education (HE). Such developments do not always address emerging knowledge about the needs of beginner teachers; further, changes…

This article questions the current situation for vocational acting training (VAT) in the UK. It aims to provide an update on the report into burgeoning provision of acting training (and the attempt to address subsequent high rates of actor unemployment) that was originally undertaken by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (CGF, 1975) in their…

This paper examines the reasons why young people's talk about themselves and their educational experiences do not seem to be valued in public discourse about education. Drawing on a national dataset of student focus groups, it illustrates how students talk about themselves in educational contexts in a way that is entirely different and more…

This commentary explores the conundrum of why learners are not routinely involved in decisions about their own learning. It suggests that engaging learners in their own learning and in the development of education systems is central to the improvement of education. Given the evidence from this Special Issue that all learners have the potential to…

Stephen Ball's work has deservedly received a good deal of attention. In this article, I detail a number of tasks in which the critical sociologist of education--as a "public intellectual"--should engage. I then place Ball's work within these tasks and evaluate his contributions to them. In the process, I show that one of the…

This paper focuses on Stephen Ball's article, "The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity", since it is here that he analyses the issue of how neoliberal education policies shape teacher identities that I also wish to explore. I begin by providing a summary of the 2003 piece, noting how it locates teachers and their…

This article aims at showcasing the main contributions of Stephen J. Ball to educational research in Brazil, particularly to the study of educational and curriculum policies. We also highlight some of the limitations in the incorporation of Ball's ideas in Brazil as well as some of the challenges that these author's ideas pose to Brazilian…

This paper traces developments across Stephen J. Ball's policy sociology in education "oeuvre" and considers their implications for doing research on education policy today. It begins with an account of his policy sociology trilogy from the 1990s, which outlined his conception of the policy cycle consisting of the contexts of influence,…

The process of "knowledge adoption" is defined as the means through which policy-makers digest, accept then "take on board" research findings. It is argued in Brown, however, that current models designed to explain knowledge adoption activity fail to fully account for the complexities that affect its operation. Within this…

For many years there has been a sharp division between project-based learning, and problem-based learning, with the former adopting a more technical rationalist approach while the latter adopts a more Socratic or dialogic approach. This article argues that current notions of project-based learning are too narrow and that combining the two…

As China has appeared only recently as an important knowledge producer with growing global economic significance, little is known internationally about how these processes develop and are managed within China. The rapidly expanding Chinese higher education system is playing an increasingly important role in China's knowledge economy and therefore…

The imperative of transforming education continues to permeate the discourse of UK education reform. Although the Coalition government's publications herald a "new school system", they reveal the same neo-liberal thinking as their New Labour predecessors. The context of the national budget deficit is now being brought to bear to promote…