Education policies are typically anchored in official texts that provide a foundation for their enactment in schools. What are the implications of an "invisible" policy not anchored in any official text due to political motives? This study explores the enactment of an invisible education policy that regulates religious enclave schools.…

This article reports on a case study investigating the micro-politics of policy enactment in a school in England. The case is sited in the literacy policy of a primary school in challenging circumstances as it joins a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT). Data gathering consisted of interviews with the school headteacher, assistant headteacher, and literacy…

Using a qualitative historical research approach, this paper examines the contextual influences, including the formulation motive and their possible impact on policy implementation, of the South African (SA) e-Education White Paper 7 (WP7). A critical discourse analysis (CDA) was conducted on the policy and data was collected through…

This paper argues that the 'new governance' narrative should be revised and modified to reflect context-specific details of the policy sector and styles of government. I discuss the modified network governance narrative, including how the theory of bureaucracy informs the function of network governance. I then apply it to analyze a case study of…

In the U.S. education system, students of color experience multiple forms of marginalization at the intersection of markers of difference. These injustices manifest in multiple forms, such as higher rates of inappropriate referrals to special education, misidentification, conferring stigmatizing labels, and subsequently placing students of color…

The paper compares the institutional development of skills formation in Lithuania and Ukraine by focusing on the implications of the post-communist transition and Europeanization and exploring the role of policy transfer. The research follows the theoretical approach of historical institutionalism and skills formation ecosystems. Despite similar…

This article employs event history analysis to explore the factors that were associated with the rapid uptake of teacher evaluation reform. We investigate three hypotheses for this rapid adoption: (a) downward diffusion from the federal government through Race to the Top (RTTT), (b) upward diffusion from large school district policies, and (c) the…

This article analyzes the messages and strategies of a sample of education interest groups, and assesses their interpretations of the political context to understand how the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) lost both political and public support during the crucial period of 2013-2014. Based on interviews with representatives of 19 interest…

This qualitative study examines the roles, practices, challenges and demands of school counselors (known as guidance counsellors) in Barbados. A focused ethnographic approach is used to provide a comprehensive and nuanced view of five school counselors' experiences. Using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to code and analyze the data…

Governance has various structures, and involves complex decision-making. In contrast to the Western governance systems, China has the dual Party-state governance system for managing different levels of governmental agencies. Under the design of such a system, the system of Chinese Communist Party Schools (CCPS) has specific missions and agendas to…

The term "equity" is commonly used in education discourse as a goal of educational improvement efforts. Yet, the term can be conceptualized in many ways, and equity conceptions are rarely interrogated in policy studies (Bulkley, 2013; Jencks, 1988; Levinson et al., 2022). Still, equity conceptions reflect an underlying ideology and…

Ontological politics has received increasing attention within education policy studies, particularly as a support for the notion of policy enactment. While policy enactment offers serious challenges to traditional approaches toward policy implementation, this paper takes up ontological politics as a concept that extends beyond implementation and…

Based on 65 interviews and secondary information, this study evaluated the programme, process and political dimensions of the Ghana Free Senior High School Education (SHS) Policy. The evidence from the data showed that the programme and its political dimensions were emphasised to the neglect of the process dimension. Effectiveness, one of the…

Performance funding has become an increasingly prevalent state policy to incentivize student retention and degree completion at public colleges. Using a Cox proportional hazards model on state-level data from years 2000 to 2013, this study analyzes the latest wave of policies that embed base appropriations into the state budget to fund student…

The opposing principles of local control and increased standardization are a prominent tension in the United States' education system. Since at least the early 1990s, this tension has taken shape around the accountability movement, defined by educational reforms that hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for performance on new…