Policy texts are representations of practice that both reflect and shape the world around them. There is, however, little higher education research that critically analyses the impact of higher education policy on educational developers and educational development practice. Extending methods from critical discourse analysis by combining textual…

State-issued seals and certificates of biliteracy are increasingly common nationwide. Nevertheless, limited research to date has examined how this state legislation functions as language in education policy and the ideological foundations of these policies. Addressing this gap, the present paper examines state seals as an instance of neoliberal…

Today, education is massively affected by marketisation and the drastic demands of the global economy. Integration training for immigrants has fallen prey to that; immigrants are employed to serve market needs, which has been attributed to the creation of "integration as business." In the article, the authors examine how integration…

In pronouncements of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy the importance of quality appears as a seemingly irrefutable concept. Yet, attention to ECEC policy history reveals tensions between discourses that construct quality in ways that endure whereas other ways are ostensibly forgotten. Drawing on a Foucauldian-influenced…

This paper draws on data collected as part of a study of the discourses of teacher professionalism amongst union active teachers in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario. Interviews revealed a triad of influences on the professionalism discourses of participants: engagement in teacher associations, the larger policy environment, and…

In this article, we develop critiques of the pipeline model which dominates Western science education policy, using discourse analysis of interviews with two Swedish young women focused on "identity work". We argue that it is important to unpack the ways that the pipeline model fails to engage with intersections of gender, ethnicity,…

Understanding how ASD policy is made at the state level is important to the various institutional and individual stakeholders who make, apply, and are governed by it. Critical disability theory was applied to this qualitative study of ASD policymaking in New Mexico. This study examined how policymakers and stakeholders brought their identities,…

This article analyses the development of the first national qualifications framework in Germany ("Deutscher Qualifikationsrahmen" or "DQR"). In this case, a qualifications framework, which is supposedly outcome-based, had to be adapted to a highly input-oriented qualification system. This raises the question, how clashing…

To understand how educational policies are created and supported for immigrants and their children, we must explore how community members make sense of broader immigrant/immigration discourses. Guided by theories of "boundary work," grounded analyses of 27 interviews with U.S.-born residents in metropolitan St. Louis (a community with…

This paper makes the case for the need to study assessment reform processes from a broader and more complex perspective that takes the historical, ideological and systemic aspects of assessment policies into account. It draws on a larger study to demonstrate how the understanding of Assessment for Learning (AfL) reforms is enriched by such a…

School leaders in Queensland, Australia, are working in a rapidly shifting policy landscape, expected to work towards system-defined improvement measures involving increasingly higher external accountabilities. This article analyses a group of long-term case studies of the effects of school improvement expectations on principals since the…

This article investigates preschool teachers' professionalism and professional strategies in relation to narratives about learning in preschool. These are expressed through the teachers' talk about documentation. A policy on increased systematic documentation in preschools has been introduced in Sweden. Preschool teachers were interviewed about…

Portuguese is the mother tongue for many Angolans yet a majority continue to use African languages in everyday interactions and schools struggle to provide equal educational opportunities for students whose first language is not Portuguese. Recognizing this challenge, the Angolan government has created a language policy that will introduce six…

South Carolina's persistent resistance to a federal, centralized national government is noteworthy throughout U.S. history. Accordingly, South Carolina's assumption of its powers governing education reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment focuses on commerce and free-market notions of competitive advantages rather than education's value to…

Although scholars have examined the effects of global tests on national and regional educational governance, few researchers have studied their impact on education in the Arabian Gulf. This research fills the knowledge gap by studying the international spectacle of PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS results in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- two…