Much attention has been given in recent years to how the OECD promotes a neoliberal, marketised vision of education. There has been less focus, however, on how the OECD also offers a neocolonial vision of education, which promotes the epistemologies of the Global North at the expense of those of the Global South. This article contributes to this…

China's influence is increasing in global education governance through multilateral cooperation. This paper argues that global education governance 'with Chinese characteristics' reflects China's salient motivations, capacity and limitations, and features. This article articulates China's global education governance commitment and its prospects,…

There has been a transnational policy convergence in introducing professional standards for school leaders, and it constitutes a dominant discourse on school leadership. Focusing on the adoption of external references in policy transfer, this article presents a case in which the global leadership discourse was transferred to China, and the Chinese…

The arena of international schools is continuously growing. One under-researched 'traditional' grouping is the United World College (UWC) movement. Its idealistic long-term mission to facilitate global peace and sustainability by 'sparking change' in young peoples' lives represents an important area of study. As well as preparing young people for…

This paper analyses the development of UNESCO's Mahatma Gandhi Institute on Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP), examining its record from global, national and institutional perspectives. The global perspective encompasses challenges to UNESCO's attempts to articulate a distinctive, humanistic vision in competition with other…

This paper analyses how 'criticality' is negotiated in the global policy frameworks on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and re-conceptualised in Vietnamese ESD policymaking. Taking the context of Viet Nam, this paper reflects on what constitutes criticality in education in the light of cultural and historical contexts of the education…

This article critically reviews the World Bank's latest high-profile report on skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the Report's prescriptions and recommendations are broadly in line with those of national skills development strategies elsewhere in both the developed and developing world, its overall analysis is quite limited and…

International organisations' (IOs) legitimacy in global educational governance is commonly seen as a function of their regulative or normative power. By contrast, this paper stresses the increasing importance of scientific research and policy-relevant knowledge and its strategic production, dissemination and transfer by IOs. The article examines…

Since 2015, UNESCO has developed a variety of programmes for preventing violent extremism through education (PVE-E), under the framework of Global Citizenship Education and Target 4.7 of Agenda 2030. There have been formal board decisions to promote PVE-E, regional and international conferences and three key publications: a Teacher's Guide (2016),…

Prizes and awards have received limited attention in scholarly research. The present paper engages with the prestigious "UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development," which annually honours three outstanding projects related to education for sustainable development (ESD). Drawing on biopolitical theory, the paper explores…

The knowledge production capacity of a country depends not only on its internal innovation factors, but also on its 'social capital' in the global network. International student mobility networks have become an important component of social capital that affects a country's knowledge production capacity. This study combines the social network…

This is the second of two articles on World Bank support for technical and vocational education and training in sub-Saharan Africa. The first article reviewed the World Bank's latest policy document on TVET in SSA. This article takes a broader historical perspective by examining the evolution of World Bank policy and practice in this key area of…

In the evaluation of any political strategy, it is essential to carry out the collection and analysis of the available data. The presentation of a complex phenomenon by means of synthetic measures can improve both the political actors' understanding of the situation and the design of new measures. In this paper, we deal with the problem of the…

In 2018 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) stressed that 'citizens need not only the skills to be competitive and ready for a new world of work, but more importantly they also need to develop the capacity to analyse and understand global and intercultural issues' (OECD 2018, 2). The OECD global competence framework…

This paper explores how a group of Cambodian teachers implemented the Ministry of Education's Child Friendly Schools Policy. It uses the concept of translation to enable a more nuanced understanding of those factors that shaped and influenced how they interacted with and enacted the policy. Using a multi-site case study in three primary schools,…