State chiefs have new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act, but their formal powers are still limited. Despite these constraints, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) analysis finds that chiefs can make a difference by wielding their powers strategically, to build coalitions and persuade others. While turnover in the…

Public schools failing to meet accountability standards have been shut down, taken over by charter organizations, or undergone reconstitution. This article challenges deficit views of students as passive and complacent in a schooling context dictated by accountability sanctions. Drawing from counterpublic theory, it describes a case study that…

In January 2014, I began working as an evaluator on an education reform project being implemented by faculty in science and engineering departments at my university. The core goals of the project were for participating faculty members to improve students' learning, engagement, and recruitment and retention in selected introductory-level courses…

This is part of a larger ethnographical study concerning how school development in a local educational context sets cultural and social life in motion. The main data "in this article" consists of semi-structural interviews with teachers (facilitators) who have the responsibility of carrying out a project about formative assessment in…

Against the background of a curriculum change in the Republic of Cyprus, this study focuses on teachers who volunteered to work along with academics and ministry officials in subject-area curriculum review committees to develop official curriculum texts. Teachers' participation in these committees was construed in official rhetoric as a means to…

This paper deploys some concepts from the work of Michel Foucault to problematise the mundane and quotidian "practices" of policy translation as these occur in the everyday of schools. In doing that, we suggest that these "practices" are complicit in the formation of and constitution of teacher subjects, and their subjection to…

In the last 20 years, there has been a growing preoccupation with fragile contexts. International development and diplomatic communities have focused on implementing Western-oriented education policies centered on democratisation efforts to transform fragile contexts. In order to understand what happens when education reform policies are enmeshed…

Schools are ideal sites for the promotion of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enhance personal as well as collective wellbeing. Schools engage in numerous programs and activities to promote the wellbeing of students. Despite indications of positive effects of a whole-school approach, reports find that implementation is challenging because…

This article proposes a framework for thinking about the ghostly, thus arguing that policy can be understood as a landscape of intersecting and colliding temporalities from which arouse curious workings of barely-there forces, spooky energies and vibrating saturations of affective ambivalences. I present an empirical study of a policy agenda of…

This study explores the challenges faced by young lecturers in managerial transformation in elite Chinese academic institutions which aim to develop into world-class universities. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews, the paper discusses how a group of lecturers on tenure-track contracts at a research university in China perceived the impacts…

In early 2014, a group of senior high school teachers initiated a series of campaigns to fight against the government's imposition of a revised history and citizenship education curriculum, an unprecedented display of opposition in the history of public schools in Taiwan. They rose above the traditional stereotype of the schoolteacher common…

South African higher education in the past year has seen violent calls for decolonisation of the curriculum, as a way of addressing the passive nature of education. The inability of the curriculum to respond to contextual issues, empower students to come of age, while at the same time remain committed to giving them a plurality of voices has been…

In a globalized world, universities face challenges adapting to changing environmental pressures and expectations of legitimacy. Studies on the topic have tended to focus on universities in North America and Europe, while Chinese universities have received less attention, perhaps due to their status as latecomers to global higher education. Based…

This paper explores the repositioning of state curriculum agencies in response to the establishment of the Australian Curriculum and the key national policy organisation responsible for its development: the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). I begin with an analysis of the federal Labor government's role in the…

Purpose: This article shows the effects of competing political forces on citizenship education in Turkey during the period of commitment to European Union (EU) accession (1999-2005). Methodology: It draws on textbooks, archival documents and interviews. Whilst Turkey had a history of civic education to promote a secular national ethos and…