Purpose: In January 2021, the state government of NSW, Australia, announced that all year 9 and 10 elective courses developed by schools will be phased out. This paper offers a brief historical account of school-developed board-endorsed courses (SDBECs) in NSW and a close analysis of the policy to phase them out. Design/methodology/approach: I…

The article presents results of research into the media debate on education in the context of higher education reform in Poland. The body of press materials comprised 884 texts. The theoretical basis included critical and post-Foucauldian discourse analysis. The study revealed five themes: (1) mechanisms of economic thematization; (2) expanding…

This paper examines how the initiation of a national-level curricular reform invites different educational ideas and how such ideas attain legitimacy through policy narratives that confer meanings about school knowledge, schooling, and the nation using the case of the South Korean national curriculum reform of 2015. By critically analysing…

The global coronavirus pandemic provides a disruption of seismic proportions and, in the short term at least, appears to further the reform agenda set by neoliberal/elite policymakers to reduce education to the exchange-value of a commodity. In an earlier article in the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, I conducted a critical scrutiny…

As new communication technologies enter the classroom, teachers must attend to how digital platforms impact the interpersonal practices of teaching and learning. In this article, I study email exchanges with three of my students--Jorge, Adriana, and Jason--over the course of one year in an 11th-grade English class at River High School, a…

Changes in political, social and educational curriculum policies over the past four decades have created discursive shifts in writing theory and practice for New Zealand primary teachers. While these policies have historically privileged a particular view of writing over others, very little is known as to how teachers engage with experienced…

This article is a focused response to the call for a "conscious use of crystallization," in qualitative research. To this end, the author brings into play a full-bodied textual metaphor, the "palimpsest," to stimulate the expansion of an integrated crystallization typology--comprised of woven and patched approaches.…

From the cognitive perspective of embodiment and relying mostly on the powerful and revealing tool of metaphor, we approach the issue of education in the Obama administration's discourse trying to unveil the ideological preferences hidden behind the use of the different metaphors. It is assumed that this body of metaphors will contribute to the…

"Excellence" has been a prevalent term in New Labour rhetoric on education, most notably in the stated goal of "excellence for all" in education. Despite that, the meaning of the term has remained imprecise, and the implications of universal excellence unclear. In this paper, three distinct definitions of excellence are…

Integrates the results of a formalist discourse analysis of Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" with field observations of his programs in Latin America. Identifies some features of Freire's discursive construction of knowledge. Documents the practice of Freire's rehumanizing discourse within consciousness-raising programs in both…