This paper revisits and reassesses the intellectual and practical contribution of Caroline Benn (née DeCamp, 1926-2000) to politics, policymaking and practice at a crucial turning point in English education, which I call the 'long comprehensive moment' between 1950 and 1990. It articulates a strong sense that her involvement in significant public…

Within the last decades, a new way of policymaking has become increasingly prominent: civic hackathons. However, in education policy research, hackathons have not been broadly addressed so far. With this article, we contribute to closing this research gap by empirically investigating the educational #wirfürschule (#wfs) Hackathons that took place…

In this polylog to the special issue on "The rise of Chinese language education policies in the oil-rich Arabian Gulf: New players, discourses and linguistic markets," three researchers with different personal and professional connections to the three languages 'at play' in the region -- English, Chinese, and Arabic -- offer their…

What is power? What is knowledge? What is the link between power and knowledge? This paper interrogates the relationship between knowledge and power in the context of Guinea's epidemic crises and political events. It draws on observational data collected during the Ebola epidemic (2013-2016), the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022), and the ongoing…

After the fall of the communist regime, Romania launched the first multi-systemic reform in the education sector in 1995. The reform was largely financed through a World Bank loan and closely followed the neo-liberal ideology promoted by Bank officials. It aimed to privatize and to implement private sector management principles in the public…

In response to a proposal to reframe the 'research into practice' agenda in UK education using partnership working, this paper examines a type of collaborative research known as a research-practice partnership (RPP), drawing on models established in education in the United States. It examines their characteristics and what has been learnt from…

Schools can be permanently closed for many reasons -- economic rationalisation, post-disaster relocations, population decline or educational failure. Research on permanent school closures reports mostly negative and long-lasting consequences, not just for the school's staff and students, but for the local community. After the 2010/2011 Canterbury…

Research involving young people is a challenging process that requires managing relationships with diverse individuals and groups, including the young participants and their various gatekeepers. While it is normally assumed that the researcher is in overall control of their research, by using a Foucauldian conception of 'power as effects' that…

This article conceptualizes art therapy as an intercultural contact zone or social ecotone, defined as the liminal space that emerges when two or more habitats overlap. In the unresolved tensions of their interaction, negotiation of power through cultural humility is an ongoing, profoundly ethical process. This premise is illustrated with examples…

This article addresses the problem of the quantification of higher education by introducing a theoretical framework for power relations and agency within this process. Instead of treating evaluation regimes as external and imposed on the sector, it argues for a relational approach to the problem of exercising power over the higher education sector…

In China, formal school groupings known as 'education collectives' have become one of the most common forms of school-to-school collaboration, promoted by policymakers to narrow the achievement gap between schools and optimise resource allocation. Previous research has focused on the purposes and achievements of education collectives rather than…

This article is inspired by Lo Bianco's theory of discourse planning. Using the case of Indonesia's second president Soeharto, the article demonstrates the usefulness of Lo Bianco's theory to understand how language was instrumental in the discourse planning of "Pembangunan" [Development], and as such, in understanding the nexus of…

This paper presents an innovative narrative data analysis approach, used in a narrative research project exploring student values. The work of three different authors was drawn upon to create a novel, rigorous and synergistic analysis tool. A novel approach to data analysis, using the stories told by one Generation Z (Gen Z) student and the…

Türkiye with its multifaceted soft power, it aspires to strengthen its influence throughout the surrounding countries of the Arabian Gulf. Türkiye is applying the maximum prominent cultural and educational diplomatic strategies for boosting knowledge and cooperation to preserve its impact inside the Gulf location. By establishing the Yunus Emre…

Collaborative writing is well established in the humanities, but with little focus on how the writing relationship comes into being, including the power and relational dynamics at play. This is especially pertinent both when Black and "white" (sic) authors collaborate in writing about race, and in the process of writing collaborative…