Throughout the last 30 years, many European countries have 'modernized' their governance of education. For the Central European school systems of Austria and the German Bundesländer it has been claimed that this 'modernization' was characterised by a sequence of reform 'waves' which culminated in introducing 'evidence-based governance' models…

The major aim of recent school education reform in China is to improve educational equity and quality. This paper aims to explore a collaborative reform in a school district in Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. The major focus of the reform has been a change of school management from "government" to "governance," which is a shift…

In this article, we contribute to the research on the process of privatisation of Finnish early childhood education (ECE), describe how the privatisation has proceeded within the legal framework and how profit making has become possible in ECE. Furthermore, we analyse how local key policy actors justify the privatisation of ECE and what the…

Managing the future has become one of the major focuses of global governance in education. In its current mode, education seems unable to answer the needs and interests of the market and future megatrends, such as globalisation and digitalisation. Calls for precision education to introduce the usage of digital platforms, artificial intelligence in…

Merton's law on unintended consequences (1936) warns against the undesirable and unanticipated outcomes of every action and policy. More recent research (Zhao, 2017) in the field of education, in relation to Merton, claims that these consequences are usually treated as inconvenient side effect of a policy, but are, in fact, planned by…

The year 2018 marked the 10th anniversary of the global economic crisis of 2008. In Europe, austerity has been a constant ever since the crisis. This article critically engages with recent institutional and ideological developments in the small Baltic state of Estonia. The article investigates the structural reforms and prevailing ideology in…

This paper argues that the 'new governance' narrative should be revised and modified to reflect context-specific details of the policy sector and styles of government. I discuss the modified network governance narrative, including how the theory of bureaucracy informs the function of network governance. I then apply it to analyze a case study of…

This article explores the realm of educational politics and the organization of opposition to neoliberal school reform in the United States of America. A distinguishing feature of the current reform movement--which blends free-market rhetoric with austere governance and undemocratic corporate control--is the callous normalization of educational…

While universities now lie between two philosophical poles -- idealism and utilitarianism -- the Humboldtian ideal primarily serves to give a humanist glaze to a technocratic discourse. Regardless of its autonomy on paper, the University does not control its finances. This guise of autonomy has set a double authoritarian heteronomy of the…

Early childhood education (ECE) is not new in Indonesia. However, in the past decade, it has received more attention, as shown by the growing number of ECE centres in both urban and rural areas. This growth is accompanied by policy development that corresponds to the global agenda of ECE. Policy development is inevitably linked with the support of…

This paper problematizes the dichotomy between neo-liberalism and socialism and the tendency to view the post-socialist condition as a process of convergence with 'Western' and 'global'. It does so by analysing the development and implementation of a quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) policy in school education in the context of the Russian…

Educational researchers have called attention to how neoliberal ideology has profoundly and detrimentally influenced public education systems, but less attention has been paid to how neoliberalism influences "private" educational institutions. This article examines the influence of neoliberal ideology on education in the USA through an…

In this article, we provide a critical explanation and critique of neoliberalism. We attempt an innovative focus ranging from the wider contemporary political and ideological shifts, to the way in which neoliberal policy specifically influences higher education and the consequences thereof. We follow a narrative logic in three parts where we first…

This article is based on an interview conducted with Mark Olssen in October 2014, and the subsequent discussions. These conversations invited Olssen to reflect on his experiences of neoliberalism as a practising academic who has worked in the UK for some 14 years, and also to comment as a researcher and writer who is well known for his work on…

This paper investigates the hypothesis that teacher education in European welfare states is commodified due to its governance by neoliberal policy making. The starting point for the analysis is a discussion of the relationship between the welfare state and teacher professionalism. For this purpose, the concept of the ill-defined problem is…