‘To be informed’: understanding the role of feedback information for Flemish/European policy

The aim of this article is to argue that the evident exchange of information on performance (and its supply, demand and use) should be regarded as a symptom of a new governmental regime that installs less evident power relations. Educational policy in Flanders (Belgium), and in particular the need for feedback information from the Flemish government, will be used as a case to describe this regime. Based upon the analytical framework of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault), the article focuses on the ‘governmentalization’ of Europe and Flanders that accompanies the need for feedback information. The main result of the analysis of European and Flemish policy documents can be summarized as follows: government or the ‘conduct of conduct’ currently takes the form of ‘feedback on performance’. This means that the strategy of the governmental regime is to secure an optimal performance for each and all (member states, schools), and acts upon the ‘need for feedback’ and ‘will to learn’ of the actors involved. On the basis of these findings, the article introduces in conclusion the notion ‘synopticon’ in order to grasp the exercise of power in ‘feedback on performance’.     

Reimagining gender through policy development: the case of a ‘single-sex’ educational organisation

In 2005, a feminist educational organisation in the USA for young women, ages 14–21, adopted a policy in order to clarify their target constituency of girls and young women. The policy defined ‘girls and young women’ not as a designation associated with fixed biological sex, but instead as a self-determined identity label creating an explicit policy of inclusion to gender non-conforming students, including transgender youth, who self-identified as ‘girls’ or ‘young women’. This article traces the series of influences that prompted the development of the policy, as well as the learning curves for this feminist educational all-girls’ community, and the discussions that led to both the unanimous adoption of the policy and a subsequent larger cultural shift within the organisation. This analysis seeks to add to an understanding and exploration of policies that address the de facto exclusion of gender non-conforming, intersex, and transgender youth from gender-based educational settings.     

Children’s education in secure custodial settings: Towards a global understanding of effective policy and practice

This unique editorial paper is one of the first that discusses the education of incarcerated young people in an international education journal. We review the eleven papers in the Special Issue on children’s education in secure custodial settings to provide key insights with the aim of moving towards a global understanding of what effective policy and practice may look like. In examining the range of cross-disciplinary papers from a range of different cultural contexts including the UK, Germany, UAE, US, Nigeria and South Africa, we are able to illuminate some of the commonalities in the education of young people who are incarcerated as well as some of the background characteristics – many of which are strikingly similar. We employed the ideas of the bio-socio-ecological systems model to explore the proximal and distal systems that interact to affect the educational experiences of the young people. These included at the microsystemic level the importance of relationships in engaging the young people with education and learning and that, the relationships between the key actors (mesosystem) as well as the importance of effective leadership (exosystem) were critical elements in improving the experience of education in custodial settings. But rather predictably, the structural disadvantages (macrosystem) that young people who come into contact with youth justice face and how these are not appropriately addressed that came into sharp focus, possibly because many countries take a punitive approach to youth offending. We argue that there are things that can be done at each systems level but that in order to make the changes to genuinely improve the lives of these young people, we make a bold call upon the global community (macrosystem), through the UNCRC to challenge themselves for a radical overhaul of youth justice approaches which put the child as child first and offender second in order to meet the commitment in Article 28.     

Is ‘gender-sensitive education’ a useful concept for educational policy?

This article responds to Astrid Sinnes and Marianne Løken’s article ‘Gendered education in a gendered world: Looking beyond cosmetic solutions to the gender gap in science’ by exploring the idea of ‘gender-sensitive’ education and its usefulness in educational policy. It draws on theoretical discussions of the concept of gender and of difference to consider ways in which ‘gender-sensitive’ education might serve the task of promoting equality and justice.     

A critical policy analysis of ‘Teach for Bangladesh’: a travelling policy touches down

This paper provides a critical policy analysis and network ethnography of Teach for Bangladesh (TfB). We demonstrate that TfB is a localised version of a global teacher education policy – Teach for All/America (TfAll/A). Santos, Boaventura De Sousa [2002. The Processes of Globalisation. Translated by Sheena Caldmell. Eurozine: Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais and Eurozine, August, 1–48] has written about the ways some national policies travel globally. He calls these ‘globalised localisms’. When they touch down and are taken up in another national context, he calls this a ‘localised globalism’. We see TfB as a ‘localised globalism’. This paper is focused on documenting and analysing the policy network that has enabled a globalised localism, TfAll/A, to be taken up as a localised globalism in Bangladesh through TfB. We see this as the emergence of network governance in a developing world primary schooling context. The analysis shows how pivotal to TfB is the boundary spanning networking of its founder, who connects the global to the local, the private to the public, and the provision of social services to philanthropy.     

The ‘German children’ of Mozambique: long-term legacies of a socialist educational experiment

State-led education policies that centre on citizenship formation and are based on socialist-inspired values have been found in many newly independent post-colonial regimes. Such policies have led to a number of educational exchange programmes between developing countries and former ‘Eastern Bloc’ countries. This paper looks at an ambitious secondary school education exchange programme between Mozambique and the former German Democratic Republic in the 1980s. Using Yuval-Davis' three analytical categories of social location, identification and emotional attachment, and ethical and political values, the paper shows how an important part of the identity of former participants in a school exchange programme, who returned to Mozambique in 1988, is built around the concept of being ‘German’ and ‘socialist’. These values of socialist solidarity continue to guide many aspects of participants' lives. However, because in contemporary post-structural adjustment capitalist Mozambique, such values are perceived as a hindrance to contemporary notions of citizenship, these values are lived out mainly in relation to their peer group of fellow ‘German children’.     

Re-defining ‘learning about religion’ and ‘learning from religion’: a study of policy change

The study of how policy processes shape religious education as a curriculum subject, rather than within faith schooling, is relatively unexplored. This paper applies a policy analysis perspective to an important distinction in non-confessional English religious education, which has also been adopted internationally: ‘learning about religion’ and ‘learning from religion’. The changing nature of the distinction in English policy documents from 1994 is examined in the light of three main voices of influence on educational policy: neo-conservatives, neo-liberals and progressives. These changes are also analysed through three policy contexts: influence, text production and practice. Revisions to policy wording are interpreted in the light of this theory, showing the growing significance of neo-liberalism, and the nature of compromise, amendment and ambiguity. The implications for an understanding of the inter-relationship between policy, pedagogy and practice are then considered.     

Shaping the educational policy field: ‘cross-field effects’ in the Chinese context

This paper theorises how politics, economy and migrant population policies influence educational policy, utilising Bourdieusian theoretical resources to analyse the Chinese context. It develops the work of Lingard and Rawolle on cross-field effects and produces an updated three-step analytical framework. Taking the policy issue of the schooling of internal migrant children as an example, it analyses how a range of fields – political, economic and public policy – ‘export’ their logics of practice into the educational policy field (as a sub-field of the public policy field) and consolidate the changes. The cross-field effects shape the state school enrolment policy and the relative positions of agents and the relative value of their capital in the educational policy field. This paper demonstrates the analytical capacity of Bourdieusian theoretical resources for policy analysis in the Chinese context, by illustrating how the inequalities experienced by migrant families have been intensified in education by cross-field effects.     

Much Ado: ‘manpower shortages’ and educational policy reform in South Africa

This paper reviews the historical context behind the ‘manpower shortages’ argument underpinning proposed educational reform in South Africa circa 1980. It seeks to explain how such an argument became a dominant theme and ideological rationale for reform, by examining its passage through liberal reformist discourse into official state‐appointed commission reports. The paper then considers why the ‘manpower shortages’ argument was taken up at that particular time, and argues that it was part of an overall “Total Strategy’ for commodifying black labour through education in the face of the manifest failure of Bantu Education to achieve this end. The paper concludes by discussing briefly the failure of this strategy, and the disappearance of the ‘manpower shortages’ theme from arguments for educational reform.     

The ‘foreign’ language teacher: negotiating the culture of a school when unfamiliar with the language of instruction

This article examines and theorises the experiences of 12 primary pre-service teachers at an Australian university, undertaking a two week professional teaching experience in Bangkok. This qualitative ethnographic study of our students’ and to some extent our own experiences draws on interviews, questionnaires and observations from the students, as well as reflective notes from two participating supervisors, and sets out to account for and understand the sources of the achievements and frustrations experienced by our pre-service teachers. The findings illustrate differences between the students’ overseas experiences and Australian-based experiences. These differences include organisational structures, teacher mentoring and cultural understandings, and the effects these had on the students. In particular, we distinguish the more readily observable structural nature of the schools in which the pre-service teachers were teaching, and the less visible cultural aspects that underlie these structures. We propose ways of helping students, as part of pre-departure briefings, to become more aware of these cultural underpinnings, with a view to helping them become more at ease negotiating intercultural workplaces.     

Making policy with ‘good ideas’: policy networks and the ‘intellectuals’ of New Labour

The educational reforms being enacted in Singapore can be considered exceptional in that they are being undertaken within a highly effective system. We explore these reforms using Brown and Lauder's ideal-typical analysis of ‘neo-Fordist’ and ‘post-Fordist’ models of national economic development. Singapore's reforms have been extensive, ranging from changes to early childhood education through to tertiary education. We examine the nature of state-market relations in education within the context of Singapore's ‘soft authoritarian’ political culture and assess the chances of success of the reforms.     

Singapore’s educational policy through the prism of student voice: recasting students as co-agents of educational change and ‘disrupting’ the status quo?

This paper examines the implementation of Singapore’s landmark policy, ‘Thinking Schools, learning Nation’ (TSLN), in developing ‘thinking students’ through the prism of student voice. In the context of twenty-first century education and the growing importance of student voice in education, this paper argues that the time might be right to ‘disrupt’ Singapore’s education status quo and incorporate meaningful student voice in education policies. Instead of perceiving students as mere subjects of educational policy enactment, and seeing policy as something that is done to them, it should be reconceptualised as something which is done with them; importantly, students should be recast as key co-agents of educational change, consistent with TSLN’s reconceptualization of learners as ‘thinking students’. Basing its arguments on findings from a qualitative case study of students’ perceptions and schooling experiences of critical thinking in TSLN, this paper considers the case for the inclusion of significant student voice in Singapore’s educational policy reforms. It fills gaps in research on student voices in Singapore’s educational reforms and TSLN’s research from students’ perspective. The paper suggests that the inclusion of student voice in educational reform might be the next landmark step in ‘disrupting’ its educational landscape after the ‘big bang’ of TSLN.     

Linking curriculum theory and linguistics: the performative use of ‘equivalence’ as an educational policy concept

The linguistic turn has helped to create new methods within social and educational theory. This study draws attention to the constitutive force of political language and the performative dynamics of one essentially contested concept—equivalence—in Swedish educational policy at both the national and the local level. It illustrates the way in which different interpretations of the concept of equivalence produce different truths, the performative concept thereby becoming a way of advocating particular understandings of the purpose of education.     

‘Drop-outs’ or ‘heritage learners’? Competing mentalities of governmentality and invested meanings at a weekend Japanese language school in the USA

Based on fieldwork at a weekend Japanese language school in the USA in 2007–2009, this article illustrates the ways in which different regimes of government arise from an activity depending on meanings individuals invest in it. We examine how two students in the same classroom experienced two different regimes of government: one of a low-track class for ‘native speakers’ and the other of a heritage language class for bilingual speakers. Building on Mitchell Dean's reworking of Foucault, we suggest a new approach to ethnographically studying governmentality which focuses on invested meanings.     

The teacher as a ‘colony’: a case study of agentive responses to ‘colonising’ education policy in Vietnam

Neo-liberal educational policies that are being implemented globally work to foster competition among schools and teachers, as well as among children. In this situation, teachers must often come to accept the dominant representations of curricular policy developed by higher authorities. In this study, a case study design is used to describe how one school in Vietnam shifted away from this state of ‘colonisation’ by reforming the school under the framework of lesson study for learning community (LSLC). This paper subsequently argues that there is a need for school-level policies that democratise school culture and practices, resisting the negative impacts of colonising policies.     

Formulating ‘principles of procedure’ for the foreign language classroom: a framework for process model language curricula

This article aims to apply Stenhouse’s process model of curriculum to foreign language (FL) education, a model which is characterized by enacting principles of procedure which are specific to the discipline which the school subject belongs to. Rather than to replace or dissolve current approaches to FL teaching and curriculum development, this article seeks to improve and enrich communicative and task-based orientations with an additional criterion for assessing the educational worth of the tasks through which these orientations are developed. Unlike the objectives and competences models, principles of procedure provide an intrinsic justification of school curriculum by enacting the epistemological structure of any given area of knowledge in the educational process. Accordingly, the article will first justify the need to come up with a process model of curriculum for FL education which is built around such principles; then, it will formulate a basic framework that reflects the logical structure, concepts and epistemological perspectives of the language studies, as a first step to allowing these to enter the FL classroom and orient the teaching conducted in it; finally, it will present three tasks whose design was inspired by the abovementioned framework, and which were put into practice with Primary education English as a Foreign Language learners during the 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 academic years.     

Researching educational policy and change in ‘new times’: using critical discourse analysis

A number of writers have drawn attention to the increasing importance of language in social life in ‘new times’ and Fairclough has referred to ‘discourse driven’ social change. These conditions have led to an increase in the use of various forms of discourse analysis in policy analysis. This paper explores the possibilities of using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in critical policy research in education, drawing on a larger research project which is investigating the equity implications of Education Queensland’s reform agenda. It is argued that, in the context of new times, CDA is of particular value in documenting multiple and competing discourses in policy texts, in highlighting marginalized and hybrid discourses, and in documenting discursive shifts in policy implementation processes. The last part of the paper discusses how such research might be used by policy activists inside and outside education department bureaucracies to further social democratic goals.     

Teachers’ leadership: a maker or a breaker of students’ educational motivation

Teachers’ leadership plays a critical and central role in students’ educational motivations. This indicates that, in the school context, a teacher’s leadership can have both positive and negative impacts on students’ educational motivation and performance. This article explores these assumptions, building on the path-goal theory, more specifically the effects of teachers’ leadership from students’ perspectives. Using a qualitative research design, this study collected data comprising 35 interviews with children and young people in both primary and upper-secondary school. The results show that the degree of teachers’ developmental leadership greatly affects students’ educational motivation and school performance. Two contrasting teachers’ profiles were found: teachers with a high degree of developmental leadership and teachers with a low degree of developmental leadership. Our findings suggest that teachers with the profile of a high degree of developmental leadership create an environment that fosters educational motivation positively among students, facilitating students’ achievement of high performance levels and a sense of well-being about their studies. In contrast, we show that teachers with a low degree of developmental leadership create an environment that is nonconductive for educational motivation, performance or the welfare of schoolwork.     

Teachers in international schools: a global educational ‘precariat’?

An over-looked global educational development has been the exponential growth of ‘international schools’. The field in 2014 involved almost 350,000 educators in over 7000 English-medium schools in non-English-speaking countries. This is expected to rise to half a million educators, mainly American and British, in 10,000 schools by 2022. The field has never constituted a ‘system’, and it remains largely uninspected, unmonitored and unregulated. There was substantial evidence from both social media comment and real-life reports in the popular press during 2013 and 2014 that the field is becoming an increasingly precarious one for teachers.