The term 'Global Britain' was widely used by the UK government between 2016 and 2021 to signal its ambition to reorient the nation's foreign policy on departure from the European Union. There was, however, considerable uncertainty about what the term meant beyond this, with some commentators suggesting that it denoted a de-prioritising of…

This paper explores the production of educational policy discourse based on a view of increasing future unpredictability, focusing on how educational policy knowledge is reconceptualized as a form of anticipatory regime. Specifically, we investigate the Israeli Ministry of Education's Future-Oriented Pedagogy Research and Development Unit,…

Wales is often compared favourably to other countries because of its commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and lower levels of school exclusions. Systematic analysis of policy documents reveals the dominance of a rights-based discourse in approaching the challenge of school exclusions, which are explained in terms of…

This critical discourse analysis explores cosmopolitan nationalism as neoliberal reform within East Asian higher education (HE). Placing cosmopolitan nationalism within the Foucauldian genealogical oeuvre, we draw comparisons between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean HE policy to expand the theoretical basis of this emerging framework. Against this…

Teacher workload is a growing problem internationally. In this article, we analyse an attempt by the state education bureaucracy of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, to address this through the 'Quality Time Program'. Drawing on labour process theory and Carol Bacchi's framework of 'What's the problem represented to be?', we analyse how the…

There has been a global convergence of policies attempting to standardize the practices and competencies of school leaders. This policy convergence highlights a similar set of leadership practices that are expected for effective school leaders, and contributes to the constitution of a global dominant discourse on school leadership. This study is a…

Improving the health and wellbeing (HWB) of children and young people has become a policy priority due to perceptions of decreased mental health and academic outcomes. This interest is seen in the Scottish education policy, Curriculum for Excellence (CfE); however, ambiguity around the term 'wellbeing' may hinder successful curriculum enactment.…

This article analyses the underpinnings and implementation of Special Educational Needs (SEN) policies in Italy, within the internationally celebrated policy arena of "Integrazione Scolastica" (i.e. school integration), through an equity prism. The aim is to explore the extent to which SEN policies in Italy foster inclusion and equity in…

This paper explores two Australian school education policy documents and the inputs they describe to boost student achievement. The paper suggests that current reform efforts in schooling like others previously configure student achievement in input-output terms confining school education policy to predictable inputs that sideline broader…

This paper reports on the findings of a genealogical study and argues that the global discourse of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is based on a number of problematic assumptions that converge to identify 'quality' as the site of government investment. Using the Australian policy context as an example, the assumption that only…

Situated in an understanding of contemporary US education as heavily influenced by a neoliberal technocracy we conducted a Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2010 and 2016 National Education Technology (NETP) plans released by the US Department of Education. Our investigation was also guided by a cyber-archaeological excavation of digital…

The needs of a globalized economy are rapidly changing what is legitimated as school knowledge and values, and calling up new understandings of teachers' role in stimulating democratic spaces. We have termed this "Teachers' Democratic Assignment." We examine changing notions of teachers' democratic assignment in Ireland and Sweden using…

This paper seeks to understand the construction of teachers within one New South Wales education policy, querying this construction in relation to both local and international processes and factors. As such, it also looks to contribute to a growing body of international literature which grapples with the role and nature of neoliberal policy…

The structure of the Australian national curriculum encompasses engagement with "intercultural education". Significantly, the context from which the curriculum was developed was heavily influenced by a multiculturalist ideology in which notions of cohesion and harmony were dominant. Therefore, those working with the curriculum need to…

This paper is a reflection on "What is policy? Texts, Trajectories and Tool Boxes," which was first published in 1993, in "Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education." It looks back to what the 1993 paper was trying to do and at some of the developments of the ideas first sketched there in my later work, in…