The administrative systems of universities attest to a shift towards more managerial forms of leadership. This article outlines how strategic management was introduced in Finland in the 2000s and how this led to a significant de-democratisation of the university organisations, despite academic communities' resistance and explicit preference for…

In this essay, Niels Kerssens and José van Dijck discuss the implications of platformization on the key public value of pedagogical autonomy in K-12 education. They focus on two interconnected concerns: how the integration of education into a global digital infrastructure contests the institutional pedagogical autonomy of schools and how the…

School districts are an integral part of the U.S. education system. Every state in the nation guarantees citizens free public education. To ensure all students are served, the states divide their land into school districts intended to provide all students with reasonable access to a school near where they live. These districts exist as units of…

Governments vary greatly in the way they decide the level of funding for public primary schools, although typically it involves using a combination of rule-based and discretionary criteria. They also tend to place restrictions on how funding is used by earmarking it for particular categories of expenditure. This practice is not universal, however,…

There is a growing literature studying the 'non-traditional' type of international schools. However, a less explored and under-theorised area is the changing dynamics of the global-local interactions in the way these international schools are being redefined and shaped by local processes, regimes of control, and mechanisms. Drawing on empirical…

Academic freedom is the most important pillar that underpins and enables a democratic and free higher education sector. Given that the academic and political debate on the concept of academic freedom tends to be one-sided and confined to the needs and experiences of academic staff and researchers, as well as in face of the ongoing attacks on the…

Given the fact that school governance entails reorganizing power, changing organizational structures, and reconstructing education methods in contemporary Chinese primary and secondary schools, this study reviewed the relevant literature and conducted a semi-structured in-depth survey of more than 50 education administrators and primary and…

In the past few decades, several countries have introduced reforms aimed at increasing school autonomy. We evaluate the effect of the introduction of autonomous academies in England on the educational trajectories of children with special educational needs. This has been done using longitudinal data on all schoolchildren in state schools in…

Through an analysis of Allahabad University's functioning, this article argues that independent India's ideas of federalism reimagined university education. New visions of the educated person - linked to ideas about the ideal citizen - changed the kinds of disciplines and universities being funded. With support from industrial elites to buttress…

The world has witnessed a democratic decline in 29 countries worldwide during the last decade in the context of rising nationalism and right-wing populism. Political transformations of this scale can reshape the higher education field because governments have legislative power, financial tools, and control over political and economic environments.…

Interrogating the White Paper 3 of 1997 which upholds academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability, I make the case for justice through higher education using public accountability. I argue that the higher education system in South Africa is capable of fulfilling such a role in the context of extreme injustices but not…

This paper explores poststructural tools as a particularly helpful ontological stance in advancing the concerns of marginalized groups in educational research. Although largely academic in nature, poststructuralism has had real and tangible effects as it interrogates everyday binaries, categories and hierarchies that oppress so many. This paper…

Analysis of educational system seems to be the most reasonable when the key points are reformation and modernization of education, since the mentioned processes are the response to transformations in adjacent social spheres caused in their turn by objective changes, which may include civilizational, transnational changes in education at national…

The promotion of school-to-school collaboration and school autonomy has popularized in the global trends of school system reform over the past few decades. This article examines the Shanghai experience by specifically taking the entrustment management reform as an illustrative example. Since 2007, the government has contracted 'good' schools in…

This article analyzes the origins of generalized trust in Finnish society and how this relates to trust in education. The study was based on a historical analysis of the role of education in building a Finnish society and nation state. The author discusses the development of a Nordic welfare state and analyzes the relationships between generalized…