The literature on higher education policy points to changes in the dominant discourse over the years. In particular, the ascendance of a discourse marked by concepts of new public management, using language inspired by neoclassical economic theory which characterizes education as a marketplace where students are customers, has led scholars to…

We are living in an era in which equity in education is framed and measured through individual academic achievement. Schools are viewed as economic engines for a better life . By virtue of providing adequate preparation for entering the economy and gaining a well-paying job, they are construed as capable of closing the opportunity gap. This…

This paper examines how economics imperialism (the increasing colonization of other disciplines by neoclassical economics) has affected contemporary education policies. I suggest that an increasing preoccupation with education meeting the needs of the economy, together with the prevalence of economic concepts outside of economics, have contributed…

This paper provides an account of the main approaches, debates and evidence in the literature on the role of workforce skills in the innovation process in developed economies. It draws on multiple sources including the innovation studies discipline, neoclassical Human Capital theory, institutionalist labour market studies and the work organisation…

In this article, I describe the influence race, historicity, and culture had on an African American social studies teacher's agency and negotiation of character education policy. Situated in a teacher personal theorizing framework, I use a three-dimensional narrative inquiry space (temporal, personal/existential, and place) to excavate this…

In this essay, Andrew Stables and Stephen Gough explore some of the implications for educational policy and practice of a view of living (and, therefore, of learning) as semiotic engagement. Such a view, Stables and Gough argue, has the potential to displace or circumvent essentially Cartesian models currently dominant within learning theory…

Until the 1950s, Canadian economists demonstrated little concern about the relationship between education and society's economic performance. In the 1960s, the neoclassical school became preoccupied with education's investment potential and, with the Keynsians, formed a consensus on greatly increased expenditures. In the 1970s, this judgment was…

The human capital concept of neoclassical economics holds that increased education will lead to increased productivity and to higher wages. Job queue and labor market segmentation theories argue that improved education merely drives up employment criteria and that the socioeconomic background of the employee is a more significant indicator of…

The "new" economics of education replaces the "old" economics expressed in human capital theory, which viewed education as contributing to individual enhancement and ultimately to economic betterment. The "old" economics foundered on the rising levels of youth unemployment, a result of declining productivity and…