Test-based accountability (TBA) draws on a managerialist ideology that emphasises standards, constant measurement, and external motivation for improvement. It stands in sharp contrast to the idea of professional learning communities (PLCs) that aim to mobilise teachers' internal motivation and willingness to cooperate with peers to facilitate a…

In Australia and globally, there is a push for accountability systems that focus on impact on student learning as an indicator of teacher quality. Therefore, how the impact is defined in Australian policy documents in teacher education must be made clear before it can be enacted in practice. This study uses Foucauldian archaeology and associated…

Since 1999, Indigenous scholars across the world have recentered research on Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. This radical change marks the decolonization of research. This new paradigm is based on the validity of Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies to conduct research. To appraise the recent evolution of this shifting…

In this article, I explore the central characteristics of the "psychosocial" as a field of knowledge in Norwegian education policy and the ways in which these characteristics are conditioned by their constituting social structures and historical contexts. This is achieved through a policy document analysis. Even though the psychosocial…

Teachers' work in school is said to be under increasing pressure from neoliberal forces. Key constructs that are essential in understanding how teachers cope with these changes are teacher responsibility and teacher accountability, which are closely related within scholarly and everyday contexts although serving different logics and outcomes. By…

In the education sector, media outlets have been increasingly active in reporting on standardized testing. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most recurrent discursive frames used by the Norwegian regional and local press when informing their readers about national standardized testing, and to explore whether differences over time and…

The article aims to depict the political framing of three grading reforms in Swedish compulsory school, in terms of the political problem they are supposed to solve and what kind of attention is given to the lowest performing pupils. Discourse analysis is employed, focusing on statement producers. The empirical material consists of policy…

In Ontario, Canada, principals' work is guided by competencies outlined in the Ontario Leadership Framework which reflect the leadership skills and behaviours needed to successfully lead schools, improve student achievement and well-being. The problem is that this document largely ignores equity and anti-oppressive leadership behaviours. The…

Discourses of 'teacher quality' have been on the rise in Australia since at least the standards-focused policy reforms of the 1990s. This paper uses a corpus-assisted analysis to explore recent deployments of 'teacher quality' and 'teaching quality' in the Australian print media, drawing on 432 articles collected from the 12 Australian national…

Despite attempts to define quality in initial teacher education (ITE), consensus remains elusive. Harvey highlights how, in higher education, there is confusion between quality, standards and quality assurance. Examination of the quality indicators in ITE reveals an over-emphasis on standards rather than its transformative potential. Original…

Regulatory drivers of teacher quality and teacher professionalism are increasingly being utilised in Australia and internationally to improve children's outcomes. In the context of a recent national review on teacher registration, this article reports on findings from a small-scale study that investigated three early childhood teachers'…

The recasting of accountability in teaching and teacher education as a problem of impact across many countries has seen a proliferation of policies and strategies that datify the work of students and teachers. The enactment of such policies can be interrogated from the perspectives of multiple policy actors to understand the effects of the 'impact…

Many governments have launched the top-down early childhood curriculum (ECC) reforms to enhance the accountability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The present discourse analysis of latest ECC policies across four diverse but representative countries -- Australia, China, New Zealand, and Singapore -- aims to examine the…

For almost two decades student voice has been used and enacted in educational settings for a range of purposes. Student voice theorists have framed it in sociocultural, social constructionist and poststructural terms. It has been located in a range of schooling discourses and there have been powerful critiques of instrumentalist uses of student…

Education acts as an important catalyst for socioeconomic and democratic evolution in society and is a critical tool for building an equitable system. In our paper, we have historicized one of the most important educational policies, viz. Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SAMSA) in India that carries large expectations to minimize the educational divide.…