Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
The literature on education policy movement – that is, the diffusion, transfer and translation of education policy globally – has continued to expand. This expanding research on policy movement has built on established approaches, while also reflecting the development of new approaches or the combination of existing ones. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of policy movement scholarship frequently remain implicit and insufficiently elaborated. This chapter responds by characterizing four related yet distinct orientations to understanding and studying education policy movement: cross-scalar approaches, discourse-centered approaches, policy mobilities approaches and decolonial approaches. The approaches discussed within and across these groups are distinguished in terms of their theoretical and methodological features. However, before presenting these approaches, the chapter first situates education policy movement within the broader phenomenon of globalization. This section explains how the political, economic and cultural dimensions of globalization affect education systems around the world and encourage or impede education policy movement. It is also attentive to how the features of globalization continue to evolve and, indeed, how globalization is experiencing a backlash along all three dimensions (political, economic and cultural). This discussion thus describes the “context of contexts” in which – and in reaction to which – scholarship on education policy movement itself continues to develop. The conclusions emphasize, first, that emerging approaches to education policy movement reflect eclecticism and, second, that the boundaries between different approaches to researching policy movement are now less clearly defined than before. The conclusions furthermore recognize the contributions and complementarities of different approaches, while also calling on scholars to strive for theoretical clarity, to move beyond descriptive studies and to engage with a range of theoretical perspectives in order to see and explain policy movement in new ways and to achieve more nuanced understandings of policy movement phenomena.
Policy convergence is an often-assumed outcome of transnational policy movement. However, different scholars have recently drawn attention to the need to unpack and critically interrogate such assumptions – going beyond the policy adoption stage and paying greater attention to sources of policy variation. This chapter engages with these debates by examining implementation patterns of performance-based accountability (PBA), a model that has expanded globally over the last few decades. Drawing on analyses of the Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) dataset of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) spanning 55 countries and seven cycles (from 2000 to 2018), our study relies on different convergence tests to assess, first, how and to what extent PBA policies have advanced across different educational systems over time, and, second, the explanatory power of two theoretically plausible sources of variation that might contribute to explaining divergence patterns – namely, administrative regimes and partisan politics. The chapter shows first that there is not a single pattern of convergence in practice around PBA, for while many countries might adopt similar discourses and policy instruments, the uses of such policies and their penetration in schools are very uneven. Second, our study shows that PBA patterns in practice are, to some extent, contingent on administrative regimes, whereas partisan politics appear to have a more limited explanatory power.
This chapter examines the dismissive characterization of East Asian Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) success – or its constitution as a negative reference society – in Australian media coverage and in international education research. The Australian case is used to critically engage with the existing scholarship on policy learning/referencing, reference societies and projection in the field of comparative and international education. By bringing to the fore the constitutive roles of racialization and colonial difference in the discursive constitution of East Asian education, I expose the limits of the current conceptualization of East Asia as a negative reference society, in particular its exclusive focus on the role of stereotyping in the negative framing. I argue that the discussion of East Asian education as a negative reference society must be placed within a long and global history of colonial difference and racialization of Asians in Eurocentric imaginaries.
In this chapter, we focus on policy mobilities as a broad term that captures work identifying and conceptualizing how policy moves through multiple and diffuse means, including nonscalar modalities. We seek to highlight aspects of the continuing conceptual development of policy mobilities studies in education, and specifically those relating to the notion of topology. We use topological thinking to dig a little deeper into the intellectual lineages of the concepts that make up policy mobilities scholarship, including (i) networks, (ii) place, (iii) time and (iv) assemblage thinking. Next, we outline examples of the emerging empirical work that uses these policy mobilities concepts and approaches in the study of education policy. In addressing these two aims, we draw attention to concepts in policy mobilities and the methodological possibilities they might afford us, as well as the potential limitations of such approaches.
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organizations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed. To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organisations. However, the underlying theoretical perspectives and the foundational assumptions of different approaches to policy movement remain insufficiently discussed.
To address this gap, this book places front and center questions of theory, ontology, epistemology and method related to policy movement. It explores a wide diversity of approaches to help understand the policy movement phenomena, providing a useful guide on global studies in education, as well as insights into the future of this dynamic area of work.
School accountability reforms are being disseminated worldwide, although their adoption is not a homogeneous process – they are “selectively adopted” in diverse education systems and are locally vernacularized. Much attention has been paid to the role of international organizations in these processes, but less is known about the role of subnational spaces of government and their relationships with the national and international levels. This chapter explores the selective adoption and uses of accountability policy solutions in two regions of two different decentralized countries (Minas Gerais, Brazil and Madrid, Spain) to provide a multiscalar comparison of two accountability policy reforms. Methodologically, we conducted a multiple-case study with a comparative perspective based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with key informants (n=53). Based on the Cultural Political Economy (CPE) approach, the results of our research suggest that the decentralized nature of federal and quasi-federal states facilitated the adoption of standardized tests, whereas the administrative traditions acted as a hindering factor for the retention of accountability approaches. We argue that the administrative traditions and the institutional architecture of the state are key mediating factors to better understand how global reforms are adapted in different settings. The chapter identifies five dynamics of policy trajectories of accountability reforms in decentralized education systems: regional competition, ideological confrontation, subnational vernacularization, horizontal emulation and multiscalar policy interdependence.
Over the past decade, dual training (DT) has consolidated its status as a travelling policy idea. Born in German-speaking countries, DT combines school-based education with highly regulated work-based training and generates interest among a growing number of countries. The challenges encountered by policy transfer dynamics behind the spread of DT have sparked considerable debate, but much less has been said on the origins of DT as a portable, export-ready policy. Likewise, while there is growing understanding on why recipient countries might be interested in DT, there is less clarity on how this policy idea acquired global currency. In light of this, this chapter examines the articulation of the German model of DT as a mobile policy idea. Building on documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews, and informed by von Gliszczynski and Leisering’s work on the articulation of global social policy, the chapter identifies a number of enabling and limiting factors that explain the (relative) spread of the DT policy idea. Particular attention is paid to the discursive and institutional efforts made by the German polity to promote DT. In so doing, the chapter contributes to shedding light on the role of bilateral cooperation in the production of global policies.
This chapter analyses the impact of the global diffusion of equal pay laws (EPLs) on the relative enrolment rates of women in secondary education. First, we aim to explain the policy movement of EPLs and then the impact this movement had on countries’ female students. We contemplate international organizations as decisive actors since they set global normative standards regarding EPLs. They foster the idea of gender equality with an individualistic perspective on skill formation and human rights. We theorize this neoliberal discourse to influence the uptake and, crucially, the impact of EPLs across countries with widely differing economic, historical and cultural traits. We show in our mixed-methods study that: (1) equal pay of men and women is an important issue for the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in the context of education policy; (2) the worldwide diffusion of EPLs indicates an isomorphic trend, which is mediated by “cultural spheres”; and (3) that EPLs can provide incentives for girls to participate in secondary education, but the effect of EPLs on participation rates is also mediated by different “cultural spheres.” We thus consider policy movement as a phenomenon itself and simultaneously analyze the de facto outcomes of this specific policy movement.
By 1928, King’s College of Household and Social Science was a thriving institution with its own architect-designed set of buildings in Campden Hill, Kensington, a highly motivated student and staff community and a full complement of household science courses. This chapter looks at how it evolved from its modest beginnings to an independent college of London University. This is a story of energetic fundraising and networking, and of the curious intervention of the Haldane Report on London University in 1913 which split household science from its feeder arts and sciences disciplines. It is a case study in the struggles that household science faced when it tried to claim a place in the academic world.
