Ontological politics has received increasing attention within education policy studies, particularly as a support for the notion of policy enactment. While policy enactment offers serious challenges to traditional approaches toward policy implementation, this paper takes up ontological politics as a concept that extends beyond implementation and…

This paper aims at providing a theoretical and empirical discussion on the concept of pedagogisation which derives from the hypothesis of a new era of "totally pedagogised society" in Basil Bernstein's work. The article is based on empirical research on higher education policy, with a focus on the implementation of curriculum change…

While a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating how well policies are implemented, that is, how well they are realised in practice, less attention has been paid to understanding and documenting the ways in which schools actually deal with the multiple, and sometimes opaque and contradictory demands of different "types" of…

This paper offers a new way of exploring some of the complexities inherent in attempts by policy makers and others to promote educational change. The focus of this study is on the current drive in education policy to alter the basis of teacher professionalism through the application of principles of lifelong learning to teachers' professional…

In 1997, the Government of Sri Lanka launched a comprehensive set of education reforms designed to promote equitable access to basic education and improvements in learning outcomes. The package of reforms arose as a political response to widespread youth unrest in the late 1980s and attracted considerable "political will", a vague but…

This article examines the role of the consultants in secondary schools and local authorities within a large-scale consultancy-based reform, the Secondary National Strategy (SNS), in London, UK. The SNS follows a cascade model of implementation in which nationally created initiatives are introduced and supported within local authorities (LA) and…

This article draws on Bourdieu's field theory and related concepts of habitus and capitals, to explore policy implementation in relation to a particular case of teacher professional development in Queensland, Australia. This implementation process is described as an effect of the interplay between what is called the policy field and the field of…

There is growing concern that almost 20 years after the 1988 Education Act, top-down, large-scale reform has stalled. The policy mix of choice, competition, markets, regulation, accountability and leadership seems not to have closed the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged areas and individuals, while most variations in school performance can…

This paper considers the establishment of three alternative programs within a school district over time to explore the assumption that such programs reflect families' preferences and that consumer demand dictates their survival. We examine differences in discourses around alternative programs that relate to the type of program and when, why, and…

The 1936 curriculum was an important innovation in the history of Belgian primary education. According to a recent study, educational practice did not fundamentally change. Personal tensions and rivalries, lack of continuity in educational policy, and failure to involve teachers in the decision-making process greatly inhibited the new curriculum's…

Charged with their own planning and development activities, developing nations have amassed a record of failed undertakings. In this category is Trinidad and Tobago's policy for "de-shifting" its bisessional schools to serve only one group of pupils daily. Experiences with "war on poverty" programs indicates that implementation…

Institutionalization is widely recognized as a rounded-off conclusion of the innovation process. This article suggests that innovation means more than achieving stability and should be conceived in more dynamic terms. A specific innovation (open project education in a Dutch secondary school) is used to illustrate the theoretical analysis. (21…

The Netherlands' new basic school (bringing together kindergarten and primary schools) was implemented in the mid-1980s to increase individualized instruction and curriculum differentiation for young children. This article summarizes a study mapping the new program's implementation by principals and teachers, and identifies three response patterns…

The costly National Grid for Learning initiative embodies the fast-growing influence of both market and technological forces in UK education. An initial study reveals that the NGFL does not represent a radical shift toward business-dominated educational policy-making, but reflects New Labour's "healthy pragmatism" toward policy…

Examines the impact of the special education needs sections of the 1981 Education (Scotland) Act, focusing on interprofessional collaboration while drafting a record of needs. Role conflict and confusion hampered administrator-psychologist cooperation, and power struggles between doctors and psychologists compromised service delivery to special…