This article reviews Margaret Meek Spencer's body of work in relation to the various policies that she critiqued from the Bullock Report in 1974 to the National Literacy Strategy in 2004. She analysed increasingly conservative moves to promote a dominant, elitist version of school literacy. A Critical Realist perspective aligns with Margaret Meek…

Achieving Washington's state attainment goal of 70% of residents aged 25-44 earning a credential requires not just maintaining but increasing college enrollment among high school graduates and adult learners. Increasing enrollment and reaching the attainment goal among Washingtonians from populations historically excluded from higher education…

South Africa must embark upon the third epoch of education policy after the failures of the first two epochs: the 1953-1994 ("apartheid") era and the 1994-2021 era (the dawn of democracy and the dismantling of apartheid structures). There were not enough education opportunities to guide all the children of the country to maturity and…

The shortage of enrollment in Taiwanese universities has become more serious in recent years. To prevent their closure, Taiwanese universities have committed themselves to recruiting more students from mainland China ("lusheng") as a way to increase financial income. However, due to national security reasons, specially designed…

The University Enrollment Quota Policy in China determines the proportion of Chinese University Entrance Exam (known colloquially in China as the Gaokao) takers in each province that is admitted to the country's universities each year. This policy strongly favors Gaokao takers from just eight provinces, while those from the other 23 provinces have…

This article contributes to the debate on the empirical applications of critical realism (CR) in school effectiveness research. Researchers that endorse this research paradigm privilege intensive, over extensive, research designs, focussing, hence, in ethnographic methods and qualitative interviewing. However, and despite some recent academic…

In 2008 Michael Fielding published an article 'Personalisation, Education and the Market' where he identified that New Labour (1997-2010) had adopted a neoliberal form of personalised education that generated both concerns and a new agenda for revitalising the public realm through personhood. In this article I present an appreciative…

The legal framing of national education systems has been subject to substantial change in the past decade, especially in Nordic countries. Earlier research has called for better understanding of the implications of these changes which, in turn, points to a need for conceptual development. With an emphasis on legal and education scholarly work,…

Purpose: This article provides a policy review of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) development strategies and their relevance to higher education. Design/Approach/Methods: This article reviews key GBA policies adopted by the central government of China and interprets higher education cooperation policies at provincial and national levels before…

Not only do Australian mature-aged entrepreneurs contribute $11.9 billion per annum to the Australian economy in over 379,000 businesses, they launch approximately 14,000 new businesses each year and actively contribute to fiscal, social, health, and active ageing outcomes in their communities. Thirty-four per cent of all young businesses in…

Very few parts of the world have legislation that prohibits the operation or the promotion of contract cheating services. This means that commercial companies providing such services can formally register and operate in most countries. If a student enters into an agreement with a contract cheating provider, what rights do they have to change their…

This paper aims to understand the influence of Islamic religious philosophy on the application of gifted education in schools. To date, little attention has been paid to the influence of religion, particularly Islam, on how giftedness or areas of talent are viewed and accommodated in the education system. The article considers that Islamic culture…

The policy context for schools in England places great emphasis on leadership and autonomy as drivers of educational improvement. The purpose of this article is to explore how we can better understand, in this context, the challenges of leadership and autonomy and the conditions of leadership development that support or hinder the practice of…

A key concern in international educational policy during the 21st century has been the impact of teacher professionalism on outcomes of schooling. Sweden makes for an interesting case because of the country's initiatives to improve the quality of education through an academization of the teachers. The aim of this study is to analyse how Swedish…

Current assessments of research impact have been criticized for capturing what can be easily counted not what actually counts. To empirically examine this issue, we approached measuring research impact from two directions, tracing forwards from research and backwards from policy, within a defined research-policy system (childhood obesity…