The aim of this article is to explore methodological issues related to scenarios on vocational education and training (VET). In particular, we examine the extent to which VET scenarios depend or build on generalizable future expectations ("myths of the future") or archetypes of the future. The analysis builds on a review of recent…

Britain has funded English language teaching (ELT) initiatives in developing countries for decades, despite changes in government and a series of substantial overhauls in the administration of development aid. This article reveals the relevance of ideational factors in explaining how ELT remained a key part of Britain's aid policy during a period…

The field of early childhood education is increasingly dominated by a strongly positivistic and regulatory discourse, the story of quality and high returns, which has spread from its local origins in the favourable environment provided by a global regime of neoliberalism. But though dominant, this is not the only discourse in early childhood…

This article looks at methodological issues arising from collecting data from policy makers. Interview episodes highlight how the processes of role-ascription and the negotiation of competences between the interviewee and the interviewer can be meaningful in terms of the analysis of "elite interviews". In the interviews, the interactions…

Although theorists and policy makers agree that schooling should be democratic, what this exactly means often varies. This article establishes a conceptual model for analyzing education policy in democratic societies, based on the key concepts of equality, diversity, participation, choice, and cohesion. The model facilitates the design,…

Concludes that the real challenge to social scientists in this administration, and any other, is not how to relate effectively and get more funds from the executive branch, but how to relate more effectively as teachers and learners in the political process--with the American people and their elected representatives in Congress. (Author/JM)

This paper presents a conceptualization that interprets the processes of policymaking, institution building, and change planning as aspects of the same generic phenomenon of cultural action. Central to this conceptualization is a view of power that explains the dynamics of these related processes while it demonstrates their integral unity. The…

Focuses on the efforts made in the decade of the 1960's to improve processes of social choice, so that the economic market could be improved or replaced by satisfactory political arrangements. (Author/JM)

Examines a community-based interagency policy effort from two contrasting perspectives: critical theory and postmodernist. Specifically, explores neighborhood resident participation in a decentralized, collaborative effort, using qualitative observation and interview methods. Although such collaboration could be considered an empowering strategy…

Suggests that the relationship between policy outputs and community power may be more fruitfully conceived as variable, depending on the type and characteristics of the policy in question. (Author/AM)

Notes and predicts persistence in the nature of the links between social scientists and the polity, and speculates that we may also be on the threshold of basic alterations in, or at least challenges to, these traditional arrangements. This prognosis is essentially hopeful for those of us who are social scientists and socialists. At issue is how…

Argues that as important as what the Carter administration will do is what the Carter victory has already done: it decisively ended the Nixon era in American society. The Carter administration will attempt to synthesize the striving for excellence of the Nixon era and the push for participation of the King era. (Author/JM)

This paper begins by discussing reasons for the failure of important aspects of Conservative education policy in the United Kingdom and finds them in contemporary Conservatism's "fundamentalist" handling of questions of culture and tradition. The term "fundamentalist" refers to certain religious, cultural, and political…

This discussion places the ten years of the war on poverty in perspective and, on the basis of both the experiment in policy intervention and some recent trends, speculates on the nature and course of social policy over the next decade. The basis of and motivations for the war on poverty are reviewed as the primary concern of the first part of…