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The reduction in local control and oversight of schooling represented by the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) in England raises critical issues for public policy. These include the articulation and exercise of power in the governance of MATs, the future of democratic governance of local services and accountability. Applying Foucault's genealogical framework, the paper analyses the antecedents of current governance arrangements and highlights and reinvigorates suppressed, delegitimised and belittled knowledges. The authors argue that the threads of representation, community engagement and local control in school governance are important components of democratic renewal. The paper examines the play of historical and contemporary factors which have fostered a discourse that enables the subjugation of agency, self-governance and autonomy of MAT constituent schools and their communities. This discourse has wider significance for the centralisation of decision making and control away from communities, and the erosion of the polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue focuses on the concept of the 'ideal' higher education student. It explores how this concept is played out in different national contexts and the implications it has for particular groups of students and their experiences within higher education. In this editorial introduction, we introduce the seven papers that make up the special issue, and then discuss some of the cross-cutting themes – showing how the papers help to advance our knowledge in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research conducted in four state schools with sixth forms to problematise two flagship 'disadvantage' policy agendas in the English context: the Pupil Premium (focusing on the narrowing of attainment gaps) and widening participation (focusing on fairer university access). While such 'priority' policies necessarily incorporate the promise of change, it argues that multiple forms of incoherence militate against this, including: their relative agenda-setting power in a highly marketised system; the contested, constitutive power of different proxy indicators; competing policy preferences that under-attend to the intersections between educational opportunities and material disadvantage. In contrast, interviews with school staff highlighted the transformative potential of lived experiences of disadvantage and reinforced the importance of adopting a wider lens than that of the school. The paper concludes that the absence of an over-arching theory of change is part of 'the problem' and it suggests where the mapping of one might begin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For forcibly displaced people, high educational attainment is economically and socially empowering. Using experiences of African refugee youth in Australia as an empirical case and drawing on the capability approach to social justice, this paper aims to assess the substantiveness of education opportunities of refugees. Qualitative data were generated through policy review and semi-structured interviews. The analysis shows that not only are refugees invisible in equity policies, but educational inequality is also framed homogeneously as a lack of access. The restrictive framing disregards differences in people's ability to convert resources into valuable outcomes. Specifically, the paper identifies four overlooked factors of educational inequality among African refugee youth: early disadvantage, limited navigational capacity, adaptive preferences, and racial stereotypes. Without an expansive view of disadvantage, it is hardly possible to break the link between marginal social position and low educational attainment of refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a qualitative study of school-to-university transition focused on working-class first-generation university students, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, it illustrates the multiple intertwining dimensions of the process of moving from school to university within an 'open-door' admission policy context such as the Italian one. Second, it emphasizes the role of students' social networks and secondary school institutional habitus in differentiating how working-class students experience university decision-making. Using a Bourdieusian framework, this paper show that family habitus and cultural capital influence the decision to transition to university. However, the paper also shows that these influences are mediated by schools' institutions according to their positions within the Italian tracking structure. In this respect, it is argued that institutional habitus constitutes a relevant heuristic to provide deeper understanding of barriers encountered by working-class students to access to university and to acknowledge the existence of important dimensions of differentiation among these students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that processes of marginalisation experienced by white working-class students provide insight into systemic problems with the English education system. White British students eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) are a low attaining group. This research investigates factors affecting their engagement and achievement. Fieldwork in three comprehensive secondary schools in a London borough used qualitative methods to gather data on the perspectives of staff, students and parents. Using Bourdieu's conceptual tools to guide the analysis, the study found that performance pressure and funding cuts can result in an institutional habitus which privileges academic attainment, side-lines the social and emotional aspects of learning and misrecognises working-class capitals. Such habitus fosters pedagogic practices which reduce levels of felt safety and limit opportunities to actively engage and exercise agency in the classroom. These conditions often make fragile the learner identity of white working-class students (and others) and prompt disengagement from school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a meta-analysis of qualitative studies on international scholars migrating to academic peripheries. In contrast to studies focused on relocating to the US and other global centers, or those focused on 'star faculty,' these studies reveal a different face of international migration. By examining 19 studies from all over the world, we identified eleven common themes centered around: institutional motivations to hire international faculty, individual motivations to seek employment in the peripheries, the specificity of migration and recruitment processes as well as various integration problems associated with choosing a career in less popular destinations. This analysis offers an overview of in-depth national cases, which is interesting for cross-cultural researchers and students of particular peripheral systems. We demonstrate that foreign-born scholars in the peripheries are very often motivated by factors that would be negligible in the analysis of academic migration to centers and face different challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian governments' centrepiece Indigenous strategy, the 'Closing the Gap' framework, established in 2008 to address systemic Indigenous disadvantage, is underpinned by the concept of 'school readiness', which expects Indigenous families to bring their children to school ready to learn. The education system commonly blames Indigenous culture as a contributing factor in explaining the 'Gap'. In this paper, we reverse the mirror of 'school readiness', examining what is known about the readiness of the education system to meet the aspirations of Indigenous learners. Using a meta-synthesis methodological approach, this paper provides an overview of research about the issues and challenges facing Australian schools to be ready to respond to the educational needs of Indigenous children. Findings reveal that the lack of teacher, curriculum, pedagogical, school environment and culture readiness are the four key aspects to consider. We conclude by discussing the implications and gaps in the existing Indigenous education strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to propose an original analysis of the association between social status and attitudes toward Covid-19 vaccines regarding upper-secondary students in Italy. The research was conducted by administering an online survey on a probabilistic and stratified sample of 5,699 students, in the spring of 2021, when the vaccination campaign in Italy had been underway for only a few months. Following the bourdieusian perspective, we have used a multiple correspondence analysis to examine the polarization between pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine groups as the clash of stances that agents take in accordance with their position in the cultural field. Our results suggest that the construction of a negative school experience by the subordinate classes is the source of a lack of social recognition in the cultural field, which feeds an aversion to everything the main institutions in this field recommend should be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the main benefits of a Portuguese programme, launched in 1996, which was designed to support schools in segregated districts (TEIPs). The first part of the article presents a theoretical framework, before moving on to the main features of the TEIP programme in contemporary Portuguese society and education. An explanation of the methodological procedures applied in the research is also included. In the second part of the article, the main results are discussed. In broad terms, the programme succeeded in reducing violence patterns and drop-out rates. On the other hand, an improvement in academic outcomes is slow and the links to local communities and the labour market are variable and, in both cases, highly dependent of local variables. In the conclusion, the authors systematise the opportunities and challenges of such a "territorial approach" and point out some key factors in enhancing its success.

This article addresses the National Common Core Curriculum in Brazil, focusing both on its Introduction and the sections dedicated to music teaching. The paper draws on contributions from broad critical curricular perspectives, arguing for the access to powerful knowledge as a means of achieving social justice and democratic social relations. It outlines some aspects of an ongoing qualitative research project, which investigates the recent curricular debates about the consistent inclusion of music in the primary and secondary levels of schooling in Brazil. Preliminary results suggest that the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) relying on the development of pragmatic and generic competencies, is very far from promoting access to the pivotal epistemic structures of the discipline. At the same time, we hope to raise awareness about the potential powers provided by musical knowledge, which might help the Brazilian music education field to strengthen its curricular and epistemological bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland's schooling population has significantly diversified in the last 15 years. Despite the growing body of research on migrant and minority ethnic students' experiences, we still know relatively little about their relationships with peers and teachers. This paper draws on data collected as part of a wider study, informed by critical race theory (CRT), about the higher education (HE) experiences of minoritised ethnic students, involving interviews with 25 students across seven HE institutions in Ireland. 11 had attended school in Ireland, and this paper examines their schooling experiences including their 1) identity battles in not being recognised as Irish, 2) experiences of racist bullying and inadequate responses of teachers, and 3) construction as 'deficient' learners, including regarding HE progression. From a CRT perspective, the findings are examined in the context of exclusionary constructions of Irishness, and the urgent need for anti-racist education in Ireland for students and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A managerial model of shared governance is adopted in Hong Kong's public universities to uphold university autonomy. However, with the political confrontation characterised by the rise of student activism, the sustainability of the managerial form of university autonomy requires review and re-exploration. This paper aims to examine the influence of political unrest on university governance in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from interviews with university council members and student leaders, this paper reveals how university autonomy is upheld in the current governance structure, how different stakeholders variously understand the nature and roles of university, and how these disparate understandings interact with the wider political environment and bring pressure on universities. The paper argues that though university management intended to be politically neutral for upholding institutional autonomy, the space for avoiding politics had been narrowed. This narrowing process illustrates the vulnerability of university autonomy in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although more students have formally gained access to higher education, universities continue to present students with norms and ideals that can function as invisible barriers to them. This paper investigates how norms and expectations in Danish higher education pose certain challenges to mature students, who, due to their age and often different life situations, do not fit the characteristics of the ideal student. Based on qualitative data, the paper shows that living up to the ideal includes engaging in social and extracurricular activities, as well as dedicating oneself to being a student. Moreover, the ideal relates to dominant ideas about the normal biography of university students. The paper contributes to the understanding of mature students' experiences and provides a framework for unpacking how norms and ideals pose barriers to some students. Our findings underline higher education institutions' responsibilities in challenging existing norms and ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The educational disadvantages of migrant students are a persistent problem in many Western countries. Against this background, policymakers often call for more diversity in the teacher workforce, arguing that migrant students might benefit from being taught by migrant teachers. Despite the popularity of this claim, there is almost no research-based rationale for increasing the diversity of teachers in Europe. This paper is a step toward filling this research gap for Germany, aiming to assess whether migrant teachers reduce ethnic educational disadvantages. Our analyses are based on a nationally representative large-scale assessment of ninth graders that provides information on the migration status of both students and teachers, with achievement tests and teacher-assigned grades in German as dependent variables. The results run contrary to widely held expectations, indicating little evidence that migrant students benefit from being taught by migrant teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study draws on the theory of 'migrant optimism' and anticipated discrimination to examine whether a gap in educational expectations and achievement exists between immigrant and native students in Qatar and explores whether the impact of educational expectations on educational achievement is contingent upon the migratory status of students (migrant or native students). It utilizes data on students aged 15–16 obtained from the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The results show that migrant students have higher educational expectations and achievement than Qatari students, while female students in all groups enjoy better performance and hold higher educational expectations. The results also show that the gender gap among Qatari students is bigger than the gender gap among migrant students. Educational expectations have a significant and positive impact on achievement among Qatari and migrant students alike. These results and their theoretical implications are further discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades, the Maltese educational system was almost entirely reliant on English examination boards for certification in secondary and post‐secondary education. In the 1990s, Maltese policy‐makers decided to establish an affordable local examination system aimed at a wide range of students. This paper focuses on the review of the Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) examination introduced in 1994 and intended to attract 80% of the 16‐year‐old cohort. Although its main aim was certification of individual competence, and its underlying philosophy and approach were non‐selective in nature, the SEC examination introduced a number of features that unintentionally led to selectivity. These include the system of differentiated papers, the language policy of the examination papers, the perceived need of private tuition to reach the required standard and the introduction of a September re‐sit session. These issues are discussed with a view to explore how selectivity is involved in all of them and whether it can be avoided. The relevant recommendations of the review are later discussed in order to evaluate how these issues of selectivity have been addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School self-evaluation is a low-stakes policy recently mandated in Ireland and while schools are becoming more consistent in engaging in this internal mode of evaluation, their engagement has not been uniform. This paper provides new ways of thinking about, understanding, and explaining how school self-evaluation plays out in Irish schools. Subscribing to the view that policies are not simply implemented but enacted through the creative processes of interpretation and translation, this paper shows how school self-evaluation is performed in Irish schools in various ways by various people. We identify numerous policy actors in our qualitative data: narrators, entrepreneurs, outsiders, transactors, enthusiasts, translators, critics, and receivers. This assortment of actors helps to bring school self-evaluation to life but as it comprises heterogeneous entities with varying characteristics, levels of experience, and motivations it is simply not possible for this policy to be implemented in schools as policymakers envisage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian migrant students are typically considered as educational paragons in the West. They have been shown to surpass other students in standard indicators of educational success. However, viewing this success with a purely ethnic framework is inadequate and essentialising. It conflates the experiences of various groups into a homogenised 'Asian' category and ignores the crucial role played by other properties and processes, such as social class and engagement with hierarchical education systems. This paper incorporates these multiple dimensions to provide a fuller account of 'Asian' success. Using large scale longitudinal survey data from Australia, we demonstrate the internal differences in the educational outcomes of Asian groups, and outline the stratifying role played by parental cultural capital. Most importantly, we show how unequal engagement with schools and the curriculum produces unequal outcomes. This intersectional approach enables a more theoretically integrated understanding of the factors that produce educational inequality in diverse societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the agency of international students in the context of university transformations in post-Soviet Ukraine. Conflict-driven political, social and economic changes in the country have laid the groundwork for the redesign of institutional policies related to the internationalization of Ukraine's higher education. However, it is not clear to what extent local universities have managed to engage the creative power and agency of international students in these transformations. By examining how international students' agency is constructed at 12 public universities, and triangulating comparative findings with data from the Ukrainian State Centre for International Education at the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and from publicly available sources including social media, this study delves into the complexities of student agency development in the postcolonial discourses at Ukrainian universities. On a theoretical level, this paper enriches the knowledge base on tensions between institutional and human agencies in international higher learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill movement (Anti-ELAB) in Hong Kong peaked the tactical radicalization of the city's recent protest history. At the same time, it signified unprecedented tactical reconciliation between moderate and radical protestors that maintained strong movement momentum and a high degree of solidarity for a long period. An ethics of solidarity was successfully formulated to illuminate deliberative practices among participants. However, the change of protest spatiality and repertoire from wildcat protesting to temporary occupation at a university campus altered the dynamics of protestors and weakened deliberative communication. This paper illustrates the struggles and learning curves of students who suffered deliberative deficit in the interaction with other protestors. This paper argues that the occupation, despite its contested nature, offered informal experiential learning of civic engagement for the students to their political literacy and civic mentality towards social movement under the intense setting of real politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on 'diaspora at home', a concept that encapsulates the unique dynamics between Hong Kong and mainland China, as an analytical tool to explore the cross-border experiences of 23 Hong Kong students at 11 universities in mainland China. It empirically ascertains how the made and imposed claims and identifications of these Hong Kong students resulted in inclusion and exclusion as their interactions with their mainland peers and institutions deepened. Specifically, it highlights how their 'diaspora at home' status offered exclusive access to privileged higher education opportunities, preferential treatments and opportunities for upward social mobility. Meanwhile, such a status also resulted in an overwhelming sense of political liability as they unwittingly became 'political tokens' and suspected political subjects amid the increasingly tense political atmosphere between mainland China and Hong Kong. This paper pinpoints the relevance of class and politics in understanding how diasporic groups engage with higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Care experienced and estranged students encounter profound material inequalities throughout their higher education journeys which demand our attention. However, cultural discriminations also pose problems. Both operate as social injustices which preclude them from being included, valued or seen as 'ideal' students, contributing towards inequitable outcomes. Drawing on feminist methodologies, this paper analyses 11 narratives of care experienced and estranged students at a post-1992 English university. This offers confirmatory evidence of material inequalities, including financial precarities and mismatched wellbeing provision. It also adds new insights into how such students are simultaneously subjected to processes of misrecognition. This includes being misinterpreted, disrespected or rendered invisible, excluding them from university lifeworlds and undermining a sense of belonging. Inspired by Nancy Fraser, the paper concludes that we must (continue to) tackle material exclusions alongside processes of misrecognition in order to further a social justice agenda for care experienced and estranged students in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon in-depth interviews with 89 students from two UK universities to explore how students from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degrees describe the ideal as well as the typical student in their respective disciplines. We provide a comparative insight into the similarities and differences between disciplinary identities based on student perceptions. More specifically, we consider how undergraduates from biology, engineering, mathematics and physics construct the ideal and the typical student in their degree, highlighting the popular discourses and desirable traits that appear to characterise students in these disciplines. In addition to a masculinised construction of students in engineering, mathematics and physics, we found a social hierarchy within STEM degrees where biology was perceived as the easier STEM subject. We conclude with a discussion of the impact of such hierarchies on student identities in STEM, and potential implications for equality, diversity and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the admissions practices of an 'Elite Traditional International School' (ETIS) in a large city in Japan. The school is seeing falling enrolment from its traditional clients e.g.'transnational capitalist class' families working for Embassies and its alumnus, whilst attracting an emergent aspiring locally-based body of parents representative of a 'global middle class' likely seeking advantages, and a new, distinct identity. The resultant tension, between dealing with market-led change (reflecting the reality) and trying to maintain and protect legitimacy as an ideologically driven institution serving the privileged 'international community' (reflecting the vision), creates a platform (the nomos) for admission practices that are potentially biased and largely hidden. Utilising a methodology grounded in the work of Pierre Bourdieu we identify how the school adopts a number of 'unwritten rules', to 'guard the gate'. Moreover, the imagined 'international community' emerges as a major field of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an ethnographic account of how Golden Harvest International School in Bengaluru branded itself as both 'International' and 'Indian', by elaborating discursive practices within the school. Drawing upon scholarship that has sought to delineate the ways in which globally hyper-mobile Indians construct a distinctive cultural identity, the paper shows how a fusion of national and international allowed the school to cater to a particular set of elite parents, who were globally hyper-mobile even as they sought to be 'appropriately Indian'. The paper pays attention to how cultural practices and resources in the school operated within a forward caste-Hindu ethos that was presented as 'Indian', while also responsibilising teachers, students, and even parents to ensure the school acquired and retained globally valued credentials such as accreditation for the Middle Years Program of the International Baccalaureate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' work in India is impacted by the ongoing restructuring of school education that incorporates simultaneous attempts at reform and regulation. Child-friendly assessment policy instituted by the local bureaucracy leads to intensification of teachers' administrative roles, drawing their attention away from critical pedagogic ones. Limitations in policy interpretation are found to be in response to the official discourse of efficiency that manifests in performative measures of accountability inconsistent with the intended reforms. In this ethnographic case study in an urban middle school for poor, teachers' attempts to comply with instruments of accountability while adapting to changing pedagogic relations with their students and achieve coherence in their identities are examined. The paper draws attention to the contrasts between models of good teaching held by teachers, vis-à-vis the official discourse. It argues for a reworking of the existing model of accountability towards incorporating a cultural-political conception of pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the Australian higher education landscape has achieved significant expansion. Initially aimed at getting more people into university, massification policies have, more recently, focused on widening participation – encouraging a more diverse array of students to 'choose' higher education. Paradoxically, this shift has deepened stratification, with new inequalities within and across the academy. However, this stratification is glossed over in widening participation policy and research. In this paper, we challenge this view by examining young people's capacities to 'choose' university using the heuristic of 'embedded choosers' and 'contingent choosers.' Our analysis of two school-based case studies highlights the early stratification of students' post-school choices, conceptualised as a continuum from an absence of choice to a wide array of global choice. We argue that rather than focus on gains in overall enrolment, there is a critical need to address the insidious stratification that is subsumed within the widening participation agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that the concept of academic futility is promising for studying the mechanisms that cause differences in educational outcomes in general and vocational programmes. The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis that in the Czech Republic, a country with one the largest VET sectors in Europe, the worse achievement of students in vocational programmes can also be explained by academic futility, and to explore the relationship between futility and the track attended. The conceptualisation of academic futility returns to the three-dimensional concept proposed by Brookover and Schneider in 1975. The analysis was carried out on a sample of 4871 upper secondary students. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit of the model for a two-level (student and class) concept of academic futility. Two-level structural equation modelling showed a negative relationship between futility and achievement and a lower culture of futility in classes with higher socio-economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article conceptualizes the notion of magic(al)ing in relation to post-pandemic ways of thinking about data production and analyses. Revisiting old data produced pre-COVID-19 and engaging with new data produced during COVID-19, we consider the possibilities and potential of magic(al)ing as a theoretical concept. We think with several ideas informed by feminist 'new' materialists and post-inspired philosophies to conceptualize magic(al)ing: monism, spacetimemattering, blooms spaces and the pedagogy of an affective world. Over a year, we embarked on a reading/thinking inquiry about magic and literacies and their combined strength in locating literacies as embodied, relational, and sensory. Magic(al)ing has the potential to frame literacy moments as socio-material instances filled with affective flows and intensities. The concept of magic(al)ing fosters a space to not only rethink literacy but also to explore humans in relation to literacies. Kuby returns to an orange-paper-frog-puppet , a magic(al)ing moment that she often comes back to when thinking of the be(com)ing of literacies, especially in the uncertain times we find ourselves in a pandemic. Rowsell returns to a flowery artifact by a little girl who took part in a makerspace study in April 2019, speculating on how the same research could be conducted during lockdown. We also think-with new, unexpected data produced during COVID-19. As we engage again with these magic(al)ing moments, we explore the guest editors' question: What methodological approaches are possible, and which kinds of research collaborations are appropriate? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many elite schools proclaim a commitment to racial and other aspects of student diversity and inclusion. Pursuing this commitment is highly complex and contentious given the traditions of exclusion elite schools are founded upon. This paper examines some of these contentions drawing on research conducted at Cherry Tree Academy, an elite pre-K-12 school situated in the USA. Interviews and observations with faculty and students revealed contentions related to race at the school. Diversity efforts were considered synonymous with addressing the needs of Black students and produced expressions of apathy and victimhood from majority White students. Such racial contentions are examined in relation to the concepts of meritocracy and social justice. Examining these contentions remains significant in light of the renewed commitment to diversity and inclusion in elite schools and the reality that elite students are likely to be tomorrows' decision makers with the power to create more equitable societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including educational sociology, youth education and insecurity.

An introduction is presented which discusses several reports within the issue on topics including international schools and the internationalization of education; transnational postgraduates and elite forms of education.

The well-established yet under-theorised body of 'Traditional International Schools' warrant much greater sociological analysis and inquiry as 'elite' educational institutions. This paper uses Basil Bernstein's Sociology of the School to discuss the 'expressive culture' of such schools, representing an idealised model of conduct, character and manner. The role of rituals in transmitting this culture is discussed by applying Randall Collins' Interaction Ritual Chain Theory showing how every-day festivals and fundraising events (commonly conceptualised as forming the 'Five Fs') can help build up positive emotional energy, which can be used to facilitate action, and embed the expressive culture. Maurice Halbwachs' concept of Collective Memory is then used to show how interaction rituals can deliver a permanent group recollection, essential for enduring class solidarity and cohesion. Overall, an introductory and coherent theoretical framework for identifying a Sociology of International Schoolingis presented, focusing on what aspects of the schooling experience makmakes it an attractive and elite, privileged one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the construction of international students in continental Europe, aiming to broaden the existing literature that primarily focuses on English-speaking countries. It explores the structural influences of policy, practices, and representations in shaping the experiences of international students and suggests using the concept of "internationalised" students instead.

The article explores the concept of diaspora as an analytical tool for understanding educational practices in racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse contexts. It proposes the framework of diasporic education, which emphasizes transnational connections, challenges notions of "home" and "host," aims to improve the lives of diasporic communities, resists essentialist hegemonies, and cannot be fully regulated by national or ethnic policies.

The article explores the relationship between young people and social movements within the context of education, particularly focusing on Asia. It highlights the ambivalent roles of higher education institutions in political citizenship education during large-scale social protests and calls for more research on the unique positioning of students within these movements.

Following the refugee influx of 2015 and 2016, many German higher education organisations (HEOs) responded with support programmes for refugee students. In this context, refugees became formally and discursively differentiated from other international students. During later stages of the programmes, this differentiation became blurred, and discourse surrounding refugee students partly shifted back to framing them as international students, which is also represented in further support programme development. Based on a systems theoretical framework, this paper investigates the shifting organisational discourse on refugee students within the context of functional needs and structural changes at German HEOs. The analysis shows that structural development is strongly related to the way functional needs and ways to address them are constituted by discursive representations. It is based on 25 expert interviews with heads of international offices and first contacts for refugees at eight German HEOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student mobility (ISM) has emerged as an important field of study that various nations and organizations have been attaching great importance to. This paper studies the drivers of international student mobility, using a competing destinations model for the international student flows among 35 OECD countries in the period 2004–2018, by integrating the motivations for ISM. We find that OECD students are motivated by both career orientation and personal and cultural experience when decide to move abroad for study. Nonetheless, remarkable differences emerge when considering country subgroups (origin countries, wealthier, English-speaking top destination (namely US, the UK, Canada, and Australia), and European countries, students search for personal and cultural experience, valuing the lifestyle of the destination country. Students seeking for education quality are instead polarised in the rest of the OECD countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diaspora communities use school education as a central way to reproduce their identity throughout generations. However, religious institutions, clubs and specific events can also perform a role in reproducing the groups' cultural identity, working as non-formal spaces of education. We examine how diasporic Armenian families in Brazil perceive the roles that formal and non-formal education play in supporting the conservation of their Armenian identity. The paper draws from an ethnographic study conducted in Armenian ethnic institutions in Sao Paulo. Participants expressed having ambiguous feelings towards these organisations, valuing their educational features distinctly. While they do not perceive the everyday practices of the Armenian school as having a central role in reproducing cultural identities, they acknowledge that non-formal educational spaces and one-day events are pivotal to celebrate these identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy and program language in the UK and Australian higher education sectors consistently deploys the term aspiration in ways that adhere to the hegemonic neo-liberal ideal of the entrepreneurial competitor-individual, de-meaning and de-valuing 'other' personhoods. University Equity and Widening Participation (EWP) outreach programs that engage with marginalised groups in school and community settings challenge people to perform particular aspirations from what can be a deeply uncertain present. This paper presents a cautionary tale from the Australian Equity and Widening Participation (EWP) context that emerged from a research-informed practice PhD, spanning two methodologically different phases. The paper argues that the discursive framing of certain aspirations as legitimate works in subtle ways to shape the perceptual horizons of EWP practitioners and participants. Specifically, the work takes issue with policy frames that create conditions for misrecognition(s) that are themselves difficult to re/cognise. A metaphorical pedagogical tool is developed using the Ames Room illusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing professional learning as a social practice underscores the interplay between subjective meaning systems and objective conditions of the social space where learning occurs. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social practice, and methodologically guided by critical realism, the paper identifies what constitutes effective teacher professional learning through mentoring. The empirical focus of the paper is an Early Childhood teacher mentoring programme in the state of Victoria, Australia. The findings show that: (a) relevant circumstances that make teacher professional learning a necessity are associated with individual aspirations and systemic requirements; (b) collegial relationships and critical deliberation constitute meaningful learning experiences; and (c) teacher learning takes place in the domains of professional dispositions, pedagogical knowledge and social capital. The implication is that in designing professional development programmes such as mentoring, it is important to take teachers' contexts of practice into account; conceptualise learning as a socially situated practice; and recognise the value of teachers' lived experiences as a locus of deliberation and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws exclusively on European Commission and Member State education and training policy, framed by social and economic policy, to consider their implication for under-educated, long-term unemployed people. The article contextualises European compulsory and post-compulsory education and training within the economic and social policies of the European Commission (EC). The article focuses on the EC's White Paper on Education and Training and on the consideration of the EC's main funding structure for training unemployed people--the European Social Fund (ESF). In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, these policies and structures are subsequently interpreted and further contextualised by individual Member State (MS) governments. The article argues that the late 20th century economic and demographic changes frame both compulsory and post-compulsory education and training policies. The policies recognize these global factors, and repeatedly use the concept of social exclusion to refer to the resulting group based inequalities.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a significant marker in global efforts to universalise a conception of ecologically sustainable human development. SDG 4's expanded vision of quality education for all extends to the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Agenda's call for education that contributes to all of SDGs, and prepares students to 'transform our world'. From a critical perspective, this paper considers the incompatibility of endless (compound) economic growth and capital accumulation, under capitalism, with the required CO2 reductions that the climate emergency demands. The paper shows how the ESD proposals reflect the orthodoxy of education as human capital formation for economic development, albeit within a reformed 'green growth' model. At the same time, it argues that their distinctive ambitions and transformational language provide space for critical educators to simultaneously work with and against their contradictions and limitations, and to advance non-capitalist and degrowth alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research conducted in four state schools with sixth forms to problematise two flagship 'disadvantage' policy agendas in the English context: the Pupil Premium (focusing on the narrowing of attainment gaps) and widening participation (focusing on fairer university access). While such 'priority' policies necessarily incorporate the promise of change, it argues that multiple forms of incoherence militate against this, including: their relative agenda-setting power in a highly marketised system; the contested, constitutive power of different proxy indicators; competing policy preferences that under-attend to the intersections between educational opportunities and material disadvantage. In contrast, interviews with school staff highlighted the transformative potential of lived experiences of disadvantage and reinforced the importance of adopting a wider lens than that of the school. The paper concludes that the absence of an over-arching theory of change is part of 'the problem' and it suggests where the mapping of one might begin.

The reduction in local control and oversight of schooling represented by the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) in England raises critical issues for public policy. These include the articulation and exercise of power in the governance of MATs, the future of democratic governance of local services and accountability. Applying Foucault's genealogical framework, the paper analyses the antecedents of current governance arrangements and highlights and reinvigorates suppressed, delegitimised and belittled knowledges. The authors argue that the threads of representation, community engagement and local control in school governance are important components of democratic renewal. The paper examines the play of historical and contemporary factors which have fostered a discourse that enables the subjugation of agency, self-governance and autonomy of MAT constituent schools and their communities. This discourse has wider significance for the centralisation of decision making and control away from communities, and the erosion of the polity.

This paper contributes to the understanding of how shifting time, space and subject positions can impact on the political habitus of border-crossing students. Employing in-depth interview data from a longitudinal project involving 31 mainland Chinese students whose higher education journeys converged in Hong Kong, it argues that it is often unintended outcomes such as the development of a political habitus that can have lasting effects on students’ longer term life trajectories. This paper’s systematic exposition of these students’ political habitus formation redresses Bourdieu’s relative neglect of the shaping of the political habitus of ‘non-professional’ political agents, in contrast to his emphasis on that of the ‘professionals’, such as politicians. This paper also moves beyond existing literature’s focus on social agents’ experiences in static and unified political fields at specific times by foregrounding the experiences of these mainland Chinese students moving across conflictual political fields over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to an understanding of the ways in which not being bound to the nation of education, in legal and cultural terms, excludes international students. Based on narrative interviews with 20 students from 6 countries, the paper considers a range of difficulties international students encounter in social and educational domains in which they are interacting and, utilising the conceptual framework of ‘nation-boundedness’, explains these difficulties. The analysis offers new insights in terms of the role of emotions that were seen in the research to be a new discursive practice, prompting international students to marginalise their rights and voices and not to exercise rights that could protect them from discrimination and racism. The paper concludes that by considering emotions alongside regulatory structures that are established for international students in the receiving countries, a more complex understanding of the ways in which lack of ‘nation-boundedness’ excludes can be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary global flows of people, ideas and capital have led to profound changes in transnational interactions, affinities, forms of sociality and understandings of citizenship. Traditional vocabularies of citizenship struggle to cope with this rescaling of dimensions of citizenship in an increasingly globalised world. In addition, educational policies and practices remain primarily focused on normative, national conceptions of citizens, thus overlooking the multiple, diverse and plural conceptualisations of diverse young citizens in classrooms today. Arguing for a fresh approach that applies ‘cosmopolitan sociologies’ of education, in this paper, we propose a framework for understanding citizenship that centres on spatial, relational and affective dimensions of citizenship. We review recent research with young people highlighting the multiple ways in which young people are constituted as citizens through a range of social, affective and spatial affinities. The paper concludes by examining the implications of this framework for educational policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]