The rapid expansion of neo-liberal regimes has effectively transformed how students -- their role and purpose -- are understood in society. Scholars, especially in the Anglophone North, have shown how dominant policy narratives tend to position students as consumers. More recent studies have begun to explore students' views of this construction.…

This paper contributes to the debate on the varieties of national manifestations of the public good(s) in higher education. Drawing on a set of 33 semi-structured interviews (with politicians, university managers and faculty), it addresses the three following research questions: How do the actors in the field define the public good(s)? To what…

A growing literature, much of it with cross-national comparisons, employs geographic lenses to secure insights into educational studies. Most of this literature focuses on schooling, though parts address kindergartens and higher education. The present paper, by contrast, employs geographic lenses to focus on the shadow education system of private…

International actors have called for greater inclusion of education provisions in peace agreements given the important symbolic and practical roles peace agreements play post-conflict. Yet, the inclusion, framing, and roles of education in peace agreements remain understudied. This paper investigates the trends in education's inclusion in African…

This paper introduces and uses Lakatos' idea of research programmes to summarise and critically evaluate academic discourse towards knowledge capital theory. The analysis uses rational reconstruction to formulate the components of the hardcore and protective belt of knowledge capital theory. By critically surveying the literature, it challenges…

In Saudi Arabia, the national education policy emphasises developing well-rounded human beings. This broader role of education echoes the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, which urge greater efforts to empower students to create a better world. This paper aims to investigate to what extent the rhetoric of Saudi education policy has…

The first half of this paper provides a historical overview of: (a) J. V. Snellman's philosophy of "sivistys"; and (b) its legacy on public policy in Finland. The second half discusses the findings of a qualitative study exploring contemporary understandings of the public good among Finnish policymakers and university staff. The dataset…

State schooling is currently transforming Tibetans' perceptions and everyday experiences in Western China. Based on interviews with rural Tibetan parents and grandparents, and using subjectification as an analytical concept, this paper argues that schooling, alongside socio-economic changes, powerfully shapes the subjectivities of Tibetan parents…

Within the current global refugee crisis this paper emphasises the fundamental role of education in facilitating the integration of young new arrivals. It argues that a humanitarian problem of such scale requires a commensurate humanitarian response in the form of socially-just educational policies and practices in resettlement contexts within…

While some studies in Zimbabwe have examined the relevance of education in rural settings, very few have done so using a human development-oriented framework such as the capabilities approach, as this paper does. In linking education and human development, the capabilities approach facilitates an examination of intersecting individual contexts and…

We use PIAAC data to study the relationship between parental education and educational success among adults from 23 advanced economies. We consider educational success in terms of both educational "attainment" (formal qualifications) and educational "achievement" (competencies) and in both "absolute" and…

This paper explores the way education and conflict have become entangled during the post-9/11 "war on terror" response to "radical Islam" at home and abroad. The paper charts the complex ways that education has been deployed to serve Western military and security objectives in multiple locations in the global south and how…

Well-being is realised through the interaction of the individual's desires and capacities, and external contexts. Contexts in postcolonial societies diverge from the assumptions of functioning liberal democratic states and capitalist economies often assumed in theories of schooling. Instead, these contexts are characterised by poverty and…

The outsourcing of education services has been widely adopted across international contexts as a 'tested solution' or panacea to meet various educational problems including school management, curriculum design, teaching and student discipline. Contracting third-party providers, it is argued, enhances organisational goals such as efficiency,…

This paper contrasts approaches to supporting ethno-cultural diversity in education in Canada, the USA and India through the lens of the experiences of the Tibetan diaspora. All three countries self-identify as linguistic and ethnically diverse states that value multiculturalism. These shared values make them insightful comparative cases to…