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This article reflects on what doing critical policy sociology means in shifting theoretical, empirical and methodological contexts of education. We focus our analytical lens on two primary considerations. First, we reflect on the politics of criticality, examining differing claims and debates about what it means to do critical research and be a critical researcher of education policy, paying particular attention to how critical policy sociologists position their work in relation to elite power and policy networks. Second, we build on these foundations to consider the trend towards researching mobilities within critical policy sociology, arguing that contemporary ‘follow the policy’ research risks orienting researchers to the problems and agendas already established by elite policy agents and organisations, while obscuring the not-so-mobile forces that continue to define education policy and practice. We also raise questions about the elite networks and privileged levels of resourcing typically required to conduct this kind of research. In conclusion, we invite further discussion on the politics of knowledge production and challenges for policy sociologists seeking to be critical in shifting contexts., Este artigo reflete sobre o que significa fazer sociologia crítica das políticas na mudança de contextos teóricos, empíricos e metodológicos da educação. Concentramos nossas lentes analíticas em duas considerações principais. Em primeiro lugar, refletimos sobre a política da criticidade, examinando diferentes afirmações e debates sobre o que significa fazer pesquisa crítica e ser um pesquisador crítico da política educacional, prestando atenção especial a como os sociólogos das políticas posicionam seu trabalho em relação ao poder da elite e às redes de políticas. Em segundo lugar, apoiamo-nos sobre essas bases para considerar a tendência de pesquisar mobilidades dentro da sociologia crítica das políticas, de modo a argumentar que a pesquisa “siga a política” contemporânea corre o risco de orientar os pesquisadores para os problemas e as agendas já estabelecidas por agentes políticos de elite e organizações, enquanto obscurece as forças não tão móveis que continuam a definir as políticas e as práticas educacionais. Também levantamos questões sobre as redes de elite e os níveis privilegiados de recursos normalmente necessários para conduzir esse tipo de pesquisa. Em conclusão, convidamos a uma discussão mais aprofundada sobre a política de produção de conhecimento e os desafios para os sociólogos das políticas que buscam ser críticos em contextos de mudança., Este artículo reflexiona sobre lo que significa hacer sociología crítica de las políticas en los cambiantes contextos teóricos, empíricos y metodológicos de la educación. Centramos nuestras lentes analíticas en dos consideraciones principales. Primero, reflexionamos sobre la política de la criticidad, examinando diferentes afirmaciones y debates sobre lo que significa hacer investigación crítica y ser un investigador crítico de la política educativa, prestando especial atención a cómo los sociólogos políticos posicionan su trabajo en relación con el poder de la élite y las redes de políticas. En segundo lugar, nos basamos en estas bases para considerar la tendencia a las movilidades de investigación dentro de la sociología crítica de la política, con el fin de argumentar que la investigación contemporánea de “seguimiento de políticas” corre el riesgo de orientar a los investigadores hacia problemas y agendas ya establecidas por actores políticos de élite y organizaciones, al tiempo que oscurece las fuerzas no tan móviles que continúan definiendo las políticas y prácticas educativas. También planteamos preguntas sobre las redes de élite y los niveles privilegiados de recursos que normalmente se requieren para realizar este tipo de investigación. En conclusión, invitamos a una mayor discusión sobre la política de producción de conocimiento y los desafíos para los sociólogos de políticas que buscan ser críticos en contextos cambiantes.

While the impacts of COVID-19 on higher education are still unfolding, it is clear that the disruption caused by the pandemic has provided a warrant to re-consider existing teaching and learning practices. We provide a reading on whether existing teaching and learning practices should be retained or whether new practices can and should emerge through the lens of culturally and linguistically diverse migrant and refugee (CALDMR) students. These students already experienced significant educational disadvantage before the pandemic moved teaching and learning online. Drawing on findings from an Australian study that explores the experiences of both university students and staff, we question whether these experiences offer hope for what bell hooks calls engaged pedagogy – as a form of university teaching and learning that is more caring, more student-centred and collaborative, and more exciting.

This report on Student Preferences for Bachelor Degrees at TAFE (Technical and Further Education) institutions is derived from research commissioned by Australia’s National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) hosted at Curtin University and conducted by researchers at Deakin University’s Strategic Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation (CREFI). The report focuses on the influence of schools on their students’ higher education (HE) preferences – particularly their preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees – as recorded by the Victorian and South Australian Tertiary Admissions Centres (VTAC and SATAC). Influence is researched in terms of a school’s socioeconomic status, geographical location and sector. The SATAC data set is considerably smaller, at around 8 per cent of the VTAC data set.Bachelor degrees offered by TAFEs are relatively small in number but a growing higher education option for students in Australia (Gale et al. 2013). The Australian Government’s proposal to extend Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) to include Australian higher education not delivered by the nation’s public universities (Department of Education 2014b), is likely to fuel further growth in TAFE bachelor degree offerings. The recent Report of the Review of the Demand Driven Funding System in Australian higher education (Kemp & Norton 2014), which recommended this change, also makes special mention of non-university degree options as something that would be of particular benefit to students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.The research reported herein is informed by a review of the international research literature, which indicates three main influences on students’ HE preferences: (1) students’ families and communities; (2) the socio-spatial location of their schools; and (3) school practices. This report contributes to understandings on the second of these: the influence of school

Under the influence of the external policy pressure of donors such as the World Bank, higher education in Ethiopia has witnessed a series of institutional and system-wide reforms. This article reviews selected policy documents to show key neo-liberal policy agendas endorsed in the reforms and explicate how they have affected social equity in the subsystem. The analysis shows that higher education reforms in Ethiopia, primarily framed by concerns of economic efficiency, have constrained social equity in two important ways. First, at a discursive level, the problem of inequality is represented as a lack of access and a disadvantage in the human capital formation of the nation. Second, the drive for greater efficiency and reduced costs in the educational provision embedded in the reforms is inconsistent with the need for the financial and political commitments required to benefit marginalised members of the society through relevant equity instruments. If the equity policy provisions should be instrumental in ensuring participation, retention and successful completion, and thereby supporting the social mobility of disadvantaged groups, they need to draw on a broad social justice perspective.

Higher education has been assigned new global importance. It is now the vehicle of choice for nations seeking to increase their competitiveness in an expanding knowledge economy. In developing nations, higher education has also been linked to goals to reduce poverty, under the influence of transnational aid agencies such as the World Bank and its knowledge-driven poverty reduction strategies. Drawing on Amartya Sen’s capability approach to development, this paper argues that this instrumentalization of higher education produces narrow conceptions of development, poverty and knowledge, and an unfounded optimism in ‘knowledge for skills’. The site for this analysis is the development and rapid expansion of Ethiopia’s higher education system, with its antecedents in a centuries-old religious education system but with more recent beginnings in the 1950s and, since the 1990s, under the influence of the World Bank. At stake are opportunity and process freedoms and the deprivation of capability (i.e. poverty) resulting from the constraint of these, evident in the nation’s higher education system. The paper concludes that without concerted efforts to redress injustices and to protect and expand people’s freedom, Ethiopian higher education has little to contribute to national socio-economic transformation agendas.

Increasingly national policy processes are intersected with and affected by global policy actors and ideas. In aid-recipient countries, donors use financial and non-financial means to influence national policy decisions and directions. This paper is about the non-financial influence of the World Bank (WB) in the Ethiopian higher education policy reform. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power as a ‘thinking tool’, the paper aims to shed light on forms of symbolic capital that the Bank uses to generate a ‘misrecognisable’ form of power to regulate the HE policy process in Ethiopia. The findings show that the WB transforms its symbolic capital of recognition and legitimacy to establish a ‘shared misrecognition’ and thereby to make its policy prescriptions less coercive and acceptable to local policy agents. The Bank uses knowledgebased regulatory instruments to induce compliance to its neoliberal policy prescriptions. The paper therefore underscores the value of symbol power as an analytical framework to understand elusive but critical roles donors play in policy processes in aid recipient countries., Los procesos políticos nacionales cada vez están más entrecruzados y afectados por ideas y actores de la política global. En los países receptores de ayuda, los donantes utilizan medios financieros y no financieros para influir en las direcciones y las decisiones de política nacional. Este artículo es sobre la influencia no financiera del Banco Mundial (BM) en la reforma de la política educativa superior etíope. Utilizando el concepto de Pierre Bourdieu de poder simbólico como herramienta de pensamiento, el documento pretende arrojar luz sobre las formas de capital simbólico que el banco utiliza para generar una forma 'poco reconocible' de poder para regular los procesos de política educativa superior en Etiopía. Los resultados demuestran que el BM transforma su capital simbólico de reconocimiento y legitimidad para establecer un "malreconocimiento compartido" de tal modo que sus prescripciones de política sean menos coercitivas y aceptables para los agentes políticos locales. El Banco utiliza instrumentos normativos basados en el conocimiento para inducir el cumplimiento de las prescripciones de su política neoliberal. El artículo, por lo tanto, pone de relieve el valor del poder simbólico como un marco analítico para entender el esquivo pero crítico papel de los donantes papeles en los procesos políticos en los países receptores de ayuda.

The past decade has seen increased attention paid to the ethical complexities of educational research undertaken in sensitive or ‘fragile’ settings, where trauma, marginalisation and socio-political precarity are prevalent. Yet, despite increased awareness of micro-ethical issues encountered in the field, there is limited research that engages with these issues from the perspective of higher degree research (HDR) students, and few studies that focus on supervisory practices to promote micro-ethical reflexivity. Here, we draw on interviews with HDR students and supervisors researching in the fragile context of forced migration and related settings of conflict and crisis, exploring issues of gendered violence, sexuality, cultural and linguistic marginalisation, and mental and physical well-being, to explore their experiences with micro-ethical complexities in fieldwork. We consider student and supervisor sense of preparedness to engage reflexively with micro-ethical challenges and identify key supports for navigating ethics-related dilemmas. Importantly, in exploring gaps in extant supports, we consider issues of individual, collective and institutional responsibility regarding HDR student and supervisor engagement with micro-ethics, posing key questions about duty of care for novice researchers working in fragile or sensitive contexts.