How and why do some ideas attain agenda status while others do not? This paper seeks to explore these questions in the context of the policy changes observed in European education policy. By drawing from the literature on agenda-setting and employing process tracing, the paper develops a theoretical argument to investigate the causal mechanisms…

Today the modern Silk Road between Asia and Europe is increasingly well-travelled in both directions by students, academics and policy makers. Over the last decade the European Union (EU) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been making more attempts to shape this route by creating an educational partnership through an…

Research capacity building and its impact on policy and practice are increasingly highlighted in the literature on international research partnerships. In the field of education and development, it is recognised that, in the past, international research collaborations have tended to be dominated by the agenda of Northern partners. Partly in…

The purpose of this article is to analyse the nature of the global hegemonies in higher education. While anti-colonial thinkers describe the dominance of the Western paradigm as an oppression of indigenous culture and knowledge and as neo-colonialism in higher education, their arguments lead to such questions as how much self-determination do…

This article traces the construction of the educational dimension of the global development agenda over the period 1990 to 2006. It argues that the multilateral agencies, and notably the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO and UNDP, played vital roles in designing the architecture of this world agenda, supported at a key stage by the Development Assistance…