Academic expertise is a key pillar of governance processes around the world. A goal of policy and public sector actors is to draw on research to improve decision making, and correspondingly, a goal of public policy and public administration researchers is to provide relevant expertise. It is not clear, however, to what extent these goals are…

Research on higher education policy in the United States often seeks to understand commonalities across state contexts to understand broader concepts influencing decision-making. However, this minimises the importance of abstract and distinct factors impacting policy processes within a state. While researchers in other fields attribute these…

This article utilises recent Australian schooling policies and associated international educational policies as a stimulus to reflect on the extent to which schooling provides genuinely 'educational' opportunities for students. To do so, the article draws upon Gert Biesta's notion of the 'risk' of education to analyse the extent to which recent…

As higher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly rely on digital technologies for teaching, research, and administration, they are facing continuous increases in cybersecurity threats due to their open and complex IT environments. They are becoming high-value targets for cyberattacks such as ransomware, data breaches, and intellectual property…

This study examines the policies surrounding Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) through quantitative and qualitative methods. It explores how AI technologies are being adopted and their impact on schools. By addressing a gap in the existing literature, the study focuses on the formation, challenges, and potential of AIED policy…

This brief is our fourth annual review of how states are and could make a difference in school attendance with new policies and practices. Reversing today's chronic absenteeism requires state leaders to make reducing chronic absence a priority. In our work with states, we see how state leadership, especially from governors and state education…

In this paper, the authors examine the complex relationship between education research and policymaking, analyzing key barriers and potential solutions for increasing research impact on policy. Four main challenges are identified: differing cultures and incentives between researchers and policymakers, communication barriers, competing values in…

In 2023 the Australian government mandated reforms to initial teacher education (ITE) courses across Australia. The key rationale of the "Strong Beginnings Report" is to better prepare teachers for the classroom and help stem the flow of teachers leaving the profession. This article suggests that the "Strong Beginnings Report"…

Commitments to inclusive education have been articulated in policy across the UK, in the context of increasingly inclusive rhetoric in education policy globally over recent years. This paper uses a critical policy analysis approach to understand the framing of inclusion within national legislation, policy documents and associated key resources…

This article provides an overview of the evolution map of China's academic burden reduction strategy by conducting a new institutional analysis. Our analysis includes various adoptions of features and configurations introduced during the 1978-2021 period, which are inherently embedded in the wide context of political economy. By using archival…

This article reports on a comparative policy analysis which examined education policy guiding the use of exclusionary discipline practices across four Australian states (Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and Queensland). Exclusionary practices, such as suspensions and exclusions, are commonly used to respond to problematic student…

This article examines how university presidents who led their institutions to achieve Carnegie "R1 Highest Research Activity" managed policy tensions created by prestige priorities and worked with groups and coalitions internally and externally. Striving to achieve R1 status requires U.S. universities to re-calibrate their focus,…

This study sought to understand how state-level policies inform and promote the implementation of restorative justice in education (RJE). A content analysis of 60 laws revealed that definitions, structures, and supports varied greatly, causing us to question whether policies support a systematic implementation of RJE and how policies can prevent…

For states to succeed in their efforts to improve reading instruction, they must ensure teachers are prepared to implement and sustain scientifically based reading instruction. The states most successful in leveraging policy to improve reading outcomes for students have taken a cohesive and comprehensive approach focused on improving teachers'…

For too long, the middle grades have been racked by a mistaken narrative that this age group is simply too difficult, or that it's a time in life when one must simply endure rather than thrive. The Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) rejects that narrative. It is time for a unified policy agenda in support of the middle grades. This…