Higher education quality assurance systems develop within a complex political environment where national level goals and priorities interact with European and global developments. Furthermore, quality assurance is influenced by broader processes in the public sector that set expectations with respect to accountability, legitimacy and regulatory…

During the last three decades in Iran, the government has had different policies on the privatization of education. After victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the new government closed all private schools for nearly a decade. Establishing and reopening Non-Governmental Schools (NGS) was the first action toward the privatization of education…

Objectives: Physical inactivity is a major public health concern. At a population level, it is increasingly perceived to be a social problem which is global and multidimensional, and which requires attention by a diverse range of state, private and civil society organisations. Given the increasing attention to physical in/activity by a range of…

This article explores the impact of changing policy priorities on the role of director of children's services, before and after the economic crisis of 2008 and the election of the coalition government. The role of director of children's services from 2003 to 2010 was driven by the New Labour imperative to deliver regionally based integrated…

This article briefly reviews the evolving role of major institutions thought to form, reproduce and transform individual as well as collective identities and values, with an emphasis on the impact of state vs market forces via educational systems. This is accompanied by a discussion of various pressures against the state to exert social control on…

Many governments in Western democracies conduct the work of leading their societies forward through policy generation and implementation. Despite government attempts at extensive negotiation, collaboration and debate, the general populace in these same countries frequently express feelings of disempowerment and undue pressure to be compliant,…

The environment in which school leaders and teachers work is shaped by educational policy. Policy is, in turn, derived from the dominant political ideologies at any particular time. The interrelationship between ideology and policy shapes both the overall organization of education and the operational practices and procedures of staff in schools…

The aim of this article is to investigate why Sweden, the epitome of social democracy, has implemented education reforms leading to an extraordinary growth in Free Schools in contrast to liberal England, where Free School policy has been met with enormous resistance. Conventional wisdom would predict the contrary, but as a matter of fact Sweden…

In interviews as part of a research study of structural reform in England, some tension between primary head teachers and their secondary peers was evident. This was symptomatic of a long-standing difference in status between the two phases. At a time when relations between stakeholders in local systems are subject to change, we seek to understand…

This paper offers a model for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of judicial involvement in educational reforms. It uses the model to analyze two case studies of court-led educational reforms in the third rail of Israeli politics--the curricula and the admission policies of ultra-Othodox (Haredi) schools. These case studies are located at the…

Educational theorists may be right to suggest that providing mindfulness training in schools can challenge oppressive pedagogies and overcome Western dualism. Before concluding that this training is liberatory, however, one must go beyond pedagogy and consider schooling's role in enacting the educational neurofuture envisioned by mindfulness…

This paper interrogates the ways in which "reflexivity" has proliferated as a normative methodological discourse in the field of international and comparative education. We argue that the dominant approach to reflexivity foregrounds the standpoints of researchers and their subjects in a way that does not attend to the situated,…

Academic research is subject to audit in many national settings. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the government regulates the flow of publicly funded research income into tertiary institutions through the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF). This article enquires into the effects of the PBRF by exploring data collected from 16 academic women of…

The cumulative tale "the house that Jack built" is used as an analogy for flawed theories. This paper considers how the marketisation of higher education in neoliberal countries like England is affecting teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions. Neoliberal policy approaches resulting in the marketisation of higher education…

In nations facing austerity measures, students risk diminished quality in their higher education experiences. Universities function increasingly like corporations as they struggle to compensate for budget shortfalls caused by declining public support. As a result, students become positioned as consumers of a private commodity that exists to…