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Purpose: This study introduces a policy with great strategic significance and far-reaching impact by analyzing the background, measures, and future development trends of teacher evaluation reform in China. Design/Approach/Methods: This study primarily conducts a policy text analysis of the section on teacher evaluation of the "Overall Plan for Deepening the Reform of Educational Evaluation in the New Era". Findings: The "Overall Plan for Deepening the Reform of Educational Evaluation in the New Era" was drafted to enhance the quality of Chinese teachers and address many problems in teacher evaluation. It comprised four sections: teachers' professional ethics, teaching effectiveness, evaluation models and methods, and honorary titles. The policy has distinctive features such as the high status and authority of the issuing body, a holistic and systematic nature, and an orientation toward practical issues. This article proposes three major policy foresights: promoting implementation through the force of political trends, giving schools autonomy in teacher evaluations, and implementing progressive reforms. Originality/Value: This study conducted a specialist analysis of the policy in combination with the real scenario and institutional environment of Chinese teacher evaluation, which could encourage international peers to better understand Chinese teacher evaluation policies and promote policy learning and dissemination internationally.

Influencing major education policies in the US such as school vouchers and charter schools, market theory assumes that organizational autonomy, parental choice, and competition between schools improve the quality of education. However, whether those policies can influence the instructional core of schools is not well understood. Comparing private and public schools offers an opportunity to examine whether market-oriented assumptions hold in practice. Relying on institutional theory, this study examines whether public and private schools differ in their instructional quality and whether such differences translate into achievement advantages in the US. Using Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) surveys and achievement data, the study integrates structural equation modeling and propensity score matching to examine the latent construct of instructional quality and mitigate selection bias. Results indicate similar instructional quality in public and private schools explaining comparable student achievement by school type. Barriers to instructional change through market-oriented reforms are discussed.

Background: Computational thinking is derived from arguments that the underlying practices in computer science augment problem-solving. Most studies investigated computational thinking development as a function of learners' factors, instructional strategies and learning environment. However, the influence of the wider community such as educational policies on computational thinking remains unclear. Objectives: This study examines the impact of basic and technology-related educational policies on the development of computational thinking. Methods: Using supervised machine learning, the computational thinking achievements of 31,823 eighth graders across nine countries were analysed. Seven rule-based and tree-based classification models were generated and triangulated to determine how educational policies predicted students' computational thinking. Results and conclusions: Predictions show that students have a higher propensity to develop computational thinking skills when schools exercise full autonomy in governance and explicitly embed computational thinking in their curriculum. Plans to support students, teachers and schools with technology or introduce 1:1 computing have no discernible predicted influence on students' computational thinking achievement. Implications: Although predictions deduced from these attributes are not generalizable, traces of how educational policies affect computational thinking exist to articulate more fronts for future research on the influence of educational policies on computational thinking.

This study aims to assess the practice of institutional autonomy at Jimma University in Ethiopia. The study employed a mixed approach by collecting research data through a questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and document analysis. Two hundred and thirty-two randomly selected instructors and academic leaders were contacted through the questionnaire, and nine purposively selected informants were interviewed. The quantitative data were analyzed by using mean values, standard deviations, and independent sample t-tests, while the qualitative data were examined by identifying common codes and emerging themes. The findings indicated that organizational, academic, and financial autonomy practices were lower than formal autonomy. On the other hand, staff autonomy was relatively at a medium level, and the overall practice of institutional autonomy at Jimma University was poor. Thus, living autonomy was found to be different from formal autonomy. The study also found that the influence of the internal and external environment might contribute to the divergence. As a result, legal provisions could not guarantee the university's living autonomy, but the relationship between the environment and the university does. Therefore, in exercising university autonomy, educational leaders and managers should take the interface between the university and its environment into account.

This article examines the independent and interaction influence of organizational climate and the type of autonomous colleges on the academic performance of students. Organizational climate encompasses various elements such as leadership styles, communication patterns, and staff morale, collectively shaping the institutional environment. Autonomous colleges, with their capacity for innovation in curriculum design, pedagogical methods, and assessment practices, provide a unique context for this analysis. To explore the effect, researchers employed a quantitative approach, surveying 480 students across 12 colleges (both government and non-government) in Odisha, India. Questionnaires assessed student perceptions of organizational climate and academic achievement. Additionally, researchers collected student result sheets and surveyed college staff to gain a well-rounded perspective on the college climate. Data analysis using ANOVA and Scheffe tests identified significant effects. Major Findings of the study confirm that a positive organizational climate, regardless of college type, is associated with higher student academic achievement. Interestingly, students in government autonomous colleges achieved higher scores than those in non-government ones. The most significant finding, however, is the interaction effect. Students in government autonomous colleges with a strong learning environment achieved the highest scores, while those in non-government autonomous colleges with a weak environment achieved the lowest.

In 2012, the Vietnamese government enacted the institutional autonomy policy to support the reform process of the higher education system. The autonomy policy signifies the transfer of decision-making authority from ministries to public universities to increase university performance and competitiveness in the globalized knowledge economy. This paper examines the nature of autonomy as a new form of governance in Vietnamese higher education through the lens of agency theory. I used thematic analysis to analyze policy documents released by the Vietnamese government between 1993 and 2021. The findings indicate autonomy means Vietnamese public universities have authority to make decisions on primary activities; yet they must be accountable for their decision-making and responsible for funding sources. The study contributes to the literature on comparative and international higher education by providing a better understanding of autonomy in a post-Soviet context and informing a transformative approach to policy practices for the higher education reform.

The construction of an organization aims to enhance the performance and versatility of the organization for society. Consequently, as a platform for training human resources, universities have to develop constantly, following the community's insistence. In 2022, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology specified there are 21 state universities with legal entities. The status of a state university with a legal entity presents extensive autonomy in the field of academic, asset, and financial management. Besides, the universities also carry an obligation for university management to develop their institution, which is in accordance with Formal Model of Educational Management by Bush (2011). This model implies that organizations have a hierarchical structure and that predefined goals are pursued using a reasonable way. This study aims to identify the dominant variables for the state university with legal entity development. The method that used in this study is literature review by Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart (2003) with a case analysis involving a number of universities. The analysis results found that the dominant variables in the universities' development included the organization structure, working mechanism or organizational guidelines, the organizational climate and culture, along with the use of technology devices.

Corporate norms and values, characterised by an enterprise ethos, became the new parameters that defined the academic environment. Academics are increasingly becoming concerned about the commodification of higher education and its impact on academic quality and the standards of quality graduates. The voices of South African academics and their experiences within the neoliberal university governance remain underexplored in the current literature. This study aimed to enhance understanding and contribute to knowledge by exploring lecturers' experiences within a corporatised academic work environment. This study took place across public and private higher education institutions in South Africa. A cross-sectional, qualitative, interpretative phenomenological research design was employed. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of 20 lecturers. The data analysis followed the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings of the study identified three key areas that triggered feelings of frustration with management: (1) participants experienced a lack of management's understanding of governing academic work environments, (2) an erosion of their collegial culture, and (3) a lack of transparent communication. Contribution: A key contribution of this study, which set it apart from other studies, was lecturers' perceptions that their professional identity, collegiality, autonomy, and academic freedom were in crisis.

In response to COVID-19, post-secondary institutions went through a widespread transition to online and remote learning to address the immediate effects of disruption in the teaching and learning environment. This study aims to map the changes and challenges in the areas of responses to students' psychological needs, responses to students' academic needs, and responses to minoritized students' needs from institutional leaders', teaching faculties', and teaching assistants' perspectives via a qualitative approach. The results suggest that institutional leaders and instructors perceived a decrease in academic motivation and increase in social isolation among students during COVID-19 especially from minoritized backgrounds. Implications and guidance on future university policies and programs to help preserve educational quality of instruction and mitigate educational inequities are discussed. [Note: The page range (1-24) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 18-41.]

In this article we share our learning experiences on the organizational design barriers we perceived to have encountered with scenario planning in higher education for program development. Our perceived barriers discussed include misalignment of culture and change intervention; constructing organizational reality and meaning making; knowledge creation and transfer of knowledge; and short term versus long term outcomes. Our retrospective analysis contributes to the understanding of the complexity of change in higher education and adds to the knowledge base on using scenario planning in a bureaucratic, hierarchical context. Our experiences are incongruent with implicit assumptions that scenario planning can be used in any context (Balarezo et al., 2017), and illustrate some important constraints to consider before using this type of forward-thinking intervention. We provide recommendations for using scenario planning and for transformational change in higher education. These changes have implications for more creative, future-oriented educational planning processes for improving higher education teaching and learning experiences.

Academic freedom constitutes an integral part of traditional university values that ensure the proper functioning of universities in pursuing truth and inculcating civic values. In a globalized world where Higher Education (HE) policy is the result of the interaction of local, national, and international levels, the positions of international organizations on questions of academic freedoms deem significant. Within global discourses on HE, literature contrasts the World Bank's human capitalist to UNESCO's humanistic approach. Through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of both organizations' documents, the paper presented a genealogical analysis of academic freedom that challenged the existence of static, opposite, and binary positions. Transformations, ruptures, juxtapositions as well as gaps, limits, and exclusions were detected within and across International Organizations' discourses. Juxtaposition of economic and humanistic rationales as well as academic freedom protection and neoliberal policy interventions have muted discursive conflicts and inherent contradictions. The failure of UNESCO to address contemporary threats to academic freedom emerged from the appearance of neoliberal transnational governmentality as an inevitable social regularity that delimits what can be said and cannot be said about academic freedom. Through coercive funding schemes and technologies of differentiation, surveillance, and monitoring, the WB created the space for such transnational governmentality, and placed faculty members under its gaze resulting in undermining academic freedoms and de-professionalization of academics.

The articulation of school autonomy into practice nationally, regionally and locally is highly situated in terms of what it enables or impedes with regard to the professional autonomy of principals and teachers. Principal autonomy does not necessarily mean greater teacher professional autonomy. In this paper, we draw on a three-year qualitative study investigating the social justice implications of school autonomy reform in Australia. We present interview data from a case study of a large secondary college to present two conflicting stories of autonomy. Supported by a managerial restructure reflecting distributed leadership, we juxtapose the positive account of autonomy expressed by the leadership team with the negative one expressed by teachers. We explore the justice implications of this disjuncture and argue the importance of critically examining the complex ways in which the intentions and enactments of distributed leadership can be differently articulated and understood within the context of school autonomy reform.

Third Mission (TM) drives universities to a purpose beyond their traditional role, especially in local socioeconomic and innovation ecosystems. To investigate the issue, we consider an exploratory and comparative study of two different governance systems of public universities (Southeast Brazil-region 1 and Texas-US-region 2). The comparison took into account data from international universities' rankings performance to address TM and the structure of financial sources to address financial decentralization. The available evidence seems to suggest a positive association between the level of financial decentralization and the capability of the system of HE to deliver TM outputs. Universities under decentralized governance structures, which permit more autonomy to manage their resources, presented better results in most selected TM indicators. These findings reinforce the general belief that the governance arrangements that allow exploring synergies within local business ecosystems are more appropriate for ensuring organizational changes in the direction of entrepreneurial action.

In its pursuit of global university rankings, Indonesia introduced a series of higher education policies, one in 2014 to grant autonomy to a select group of universities, and another in 2017 to tie financial and promotional incentives to scientific publications for all researchers. To examine scientific productivity surrounding these policies, we use bibliometric data from Scopus spanning three decades from 1990 to 2020. We investigate the patterns of publication and collaboration and analyze them across journal quartiles, academic fields, and researcher cohorts. Our findings reveal that publications increased dramatically for both autonomous and non-autonomous higher education institutions after 2014. Single-university authorship was common practice and skewed publication quality towards Q3 and Q4 journals, while co-authorships with foreign organizations pulled the shift towards Q1 journals consistently across all fields. New researchers starting in 2014 published fewer Q1 and more Q3 and Q4 publications than the earlier cohort. We highlight policy implications on the need for a balance between publication quantity and quality and call on Indonesian policymakers to introduce holistic higher education reforms rather than introducing reforms that focus on the performance of the university for ranking purposes.

Federal and highly decentralized political systems open different spaces to interpret, adapt, and enact international policy trends and ideas within the same territory. Spain, a country with a highly decentralized educational system and contentious territorial politics, is a very suitable case to analyze these dynamics. Spain and its different regions have not been immune to the influence of global policy ideas that gear around promoting private provision, school choice, and New Public Management (NPM) in education. However, the consolidation of the decentralization project, together with the fact that many regional governments have aimed to construct, for a variety of reasons, singular political profiles, have resulted in markedly different policy trajectories. To show this, this article pays particular attention to recent changes in the educational governance arrangements of two important Spanish regions, Madrid and Catalonia, as they have gone through differentiated processes of educational reform. Albeit the two regional education systems share important features (such as a historical and wide-scale public-private partnership for school provision), they have engaged with, combined, and mobilized exogenous and endogenous privatization policy ideas in remarkably different ways. The article delves into the political drivers behind this policy differentiation process by paying special attention to the relations of coordination, conflict, and competition that prevail within an incomplete federal system, such as the Spanish one.

The New Education Policy (NEP), 2020, adopted by Government of India, envisages significant and far-reaching reforms in higher education sector in India. In this article, I foreground certain peculiar features of the process of massification of higher education in India, including privatisation and fragmentation. I locate the political economy of higher education in India in tensions inherent in centre-state relations and the pressure to respond to popular aspirations on the one hand and maintain standards on the other. The NEP, 2020 does not appear to acknowledge these historical processes. Instead, they appear to rely on a corporate model of BoG-driven governance of higher education institutions to drive the envisaged changes.

The widespread adoption of school autonomy with accountability reforms in education has generated debate regarding the relationship between autonomy, innovation and accountability. While at the policy design level, these three elements are highly related, several authors highlight the contradictions among them. By analyzing key documents and interviews, this paper aims to identify the program ontology behind the current Italian National Evaluation System (SNV), with a focus on the way in which autonomy, accountability and innovation have been conceptualized and linked together. The paper also aims to explore whether pitfalls and/or tensions exist that might hamper the achievement of the SNV goals. The findings highlight the peculiarities of the Italian autonomy with accountability system, which has resulted from the involvement of different stakeholders in the design and implementation of the reforms. The findings also reveal contradictions regarding some of its premises. Various rationales (improvement, efficiency, equity and transparency) emerge that seem to have acted as drivers of the reforms, however, the influence of globalizing discourses on international competition and the benefits of datafication also appears significant. A number of contextual aspects are finally considered which hamper the expected change mechanisms, highlighting the discontinuous ground in which such policy "dispositifs" operate.

Background: The higher education institutions will achieve autonomy traversing the path of graded accreditation. The autonomy of higher education is linked with the quality of education and accreditation. Higher education institutions will not only achieve autonomy but will sustain it in ever-changing external and internal environments. Purpose: The purpose is to design strategies for the sustenance of autonomy in higher education institutions. Method: The paper is based on an exploratory qualitative study conducted during 2020. The research objectives emanate from the review of the literature and the experiences of the researcher. The research objective is further explored from the literature review to formulate the research questions. The population for the study constitutes the autonomous higher education institutions of the country including engineering, management, pharmacy, and polytechnic institutions. The researcher selected a purposive sample to gather the information and views of the respondents. Respondents were selected from all over India, all types of institutions, and all levels of the institute. The researcher designed a comprehensive, concise, precise, and accurate structured and semistructured research instrument based on the literature, experiences, and focus group discussion. This research instrument was validated on content and construct in a group of six persons working in the area of autonomy. Then it was prepared in the Google form which was validated by forty respondents. The respondents are principals, heads of departments, senior faculty members working in national-level institutes, higher education institutes, and technical institutions. The instrument was mailed to more than 8000 respondents out of which 954 respondents provided information. The information is provided by principals, deans, heads of departments, and senior faculty members. Secondary information is also used to fill up the gap to achieve the research objective. The information received from structured instruments is compiled using Microsoft Excel Sheet to calculate the weighted mean and percentage. Results: The strategies for sustaining autonomy at central government, state government, regulatory body, institute, teacher, and student levels are evolved. Conclusion: To reap the full potential of autonomy and its sustenance strategies at different levels of hierarchy need to be effectively implemented on continuous basis.

Purpose: This study reviews the latest revisions to "Implementation Regulations of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People's Republic of China." In doing so, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the policy and its history, as well as the future outlook of private education in China. Design/Approach/Methods: Data were collected from the official website of the Ministry of Education of China as well as the media. Findings: This study identifies the background, rationale, major breakthroughs, and impacts of the revised policy. Originality/Value: This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the latest revisions to "Implementation Regulations of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People's Republic of China." In addition to an academic interpretation of these policy changes, it suggests how private education in China may develop.

This paper is to analyze the 2007 reform of the higher education system in Portugal (RJIES), which ambitioned fundamental changes in the governance of universities, the option given to higher education institutions (HEIs) to be transformed into public foundations being only one element of the reform. Based on desk research, the key elements of the reform, the process of designing and introducing it and an assessment of its impact are presented. We may conclude that the governance reform has led to more effective management of universities regardless of their legal status, but the new, foundation form has not fulfilled the expectations regarding the more autonomous and flexible operation of the transformed HEIs, due, to a large extent, to the financial restrictions brought about by the global crisis.

Several European countries have made it possible for public universities to become foundation universities. The transformation has also involved a change in their governance model with external actors taking important decision-making positions. We believe that these changes also imply a transformation of the organisational culture of the said universities. This study examines the transformation of a Finnish and a Hungarian university into a foundation one based on documents, interviews and questionnaire surveys. We found that for both universities there is strong pressure to move towards a corporate culture, but that change is not happening without resistance at either university.

In this paper we explore the concept of the middle tier in education systems, outlining how it is a crucial element that links high-level education policy to the practices that are carried out in schools. Reflecting on the similarities and differences in the profiles of the middle tiers of the four nations of the United Kingdom (UK), we observe how they are part of a complex educational ecosystem. While noting that there are variations in the profiles of the middle tiers we also highlight how they share some common functions that are key to mediating the way that policy links with schools. Using a four nations comparative approach to analyse the middle tier allows us a more nuanced understanding of how education policy works in general, but also how policy works in each particular national context.

Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) has become increasingly prominent in the public sector and in educational organizations. A policy for educational management based on EO has dimensions related to innovation, proactiveness, and risk-taking, which are preceded by organizational characteristics such as management support, discretion/autonomy, rewards/recognition, organizational boundaries, and time availability. The objective of this study is to analyze the organizational characteristics that influence EO in Municipal Centers for Early Childhood Education ("Centros Municipais de Educação Infantil--CEMEIs") in Brazil. The study was conducted in a town in the state of Minas Gerais and involved 15 CEMEIs, applying questionnaires to education professionals as coordinators, monitors, and teachers, whose data were processed using descriptive statistics and a structural equation model. The results present a construct for validating organizational characteristics that can influence EO in public early childhood education organizations. However, autonomy and management support were the determinants of EO in the organizations studied. Finally, there are implications and considerations for policies and strategies in public educational organizations, indicating EO as a way to deal with contingencies, resource scarcity, the stimulation of (intra)entrepreneurial culture and even potential early childhood education for entrepreneurship.

Recent polling shows a marked increase in public distrust towards institutions and fellow citizens in the United States. In this context of rising distrust and democratic crisis, teachers have not been exempt from public scrutiny. Recent legislation in the United States targeting school curricula and classroom discourse reveal a mounting distrust within the context of public education. In fact, over the course of the past few years, an onslaught of parental rights bills have been introduced across the United States. In the current context, much of this legislation has emerged as resistance to the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools. Much of the philosophy of education literature regarding parental rights legislation has aimed to understand the nuanced relationship between the rights of parents and the rights of children. Throughout the course of this paper, the author aims to apply two lenses to the issue of parental rights bills and the challenge that they pose in epistemic spaces. First, the author examines parental rights bills through the lens of epistemic agency. In addition, the author applies the lens of epistemic authority to the issue and argues that parental rights legislation can be viewed as a challenge to schools' epistemic authority insofar as it intervenes into the trusting relationship between teachers and their students. The author concludes that parental rights bills perpetuate epistemic injustice against students in that they constrain which epistemic resources are made available to them and subsequently limit their flourishing as epistemic agents.

The purpose of this article was to critically explore the experiences and lessons of governance in higher education systems in the Commonwealth of Asia, and most importantly how these experiences and good practices can be applied to the governance and management of higher education in Commonwealth nations, especially in the Commonwealth of Africa. In order to address the purpose of this research study, systematic secondary research was conducted through a keyword search strategy. Using the gathered data, discussions were made on the various governance and management aspects in three Commonwealth Asian countries namely Malaysia, Singapore, and India in aspects and issues such as university autonomy, quality assurance, university-based research development, funding, institutional differentiation, and governance reforms proved salient for discussion. It is important to note that this article is not attempting to address higher education across geopolitical contexts by comparing governance practices between Commonwealth Africa and Commonwealth Asia; instead, it aims to share good practices for the common good and to generate a contextual application of higher education governance practices between the Commonwealth of Asia and the Commonwealth of Africa.

This article examines the concept of academic autonomy within the "Yugoslav model" of higher education as a peripheral system characterised by an eclectic mix of elements from different systems, resulting in mutations with unique features during its development. The hitherto under-researched history of this higher education model has by no means been uniform or linear; because of this complexity, the focus here is limited to the case of Slovenia but considers the broader context. The focus is on the understanding, legislation, and (non-)implementation of academic autonomy as articulated between 1945 and 1991. The concept was inherited: it was never used in the legislation of federal socialist Yugoslavia yet was used in political and public debates. Our analysis relates these debates to the rapidly changing legislation and the broader socio-political context. Although the "Yugoslav model" has vanished, its traces and ashes, including old contradictions and dilemmas, remain partly present in the higher education systems of independent states that emerged on the territory of the former federation. The principle that knowledge of the past is the key to understanding the present and approaching the future is confirmed in this case as well.

Privatisation and commercialisation in education encompass a range of interrelated practices, including the outsourcing of educational services as well as increased reliance on commercially produced resources for the delivery of learning and assessment. An increase in these practices has accompanied the shift from centralised systemic management of schools and specific programs like English as an Additional Language/ Dialect (EAL/D), to school autonomy whereby principals control budget expenditure decisions, ostensibly in response to the needs of their school population. The intersection between school autonomy, commercialisation and delivery of the specialised service of EAL/D is the focus of this paper. This paper presents the findings of a survey with EAL/D teachers in Australia, in relation to the extent to which they are experiencing commercialisation and the impact this is having on the delivery of a longstanding service designed to ensure equity of outcomes for English language learners. The data suggests that the use of commercial products in schools may not be aligned with appropriate educational practices which target language learning needs. There is a strong need for further research in the uptake and use of commercial products for specialist language support. This will elucidate the extent to which EAL/D as a specialisation is being impacted by the use of commercial products both in the appropriacy of the products and in the deprofessionalisation of specialist EAL/D teachers.

Employing an institutional logics framework and critical discourse analysis, this study examines the discourse of participants in a stakeholder-feedback meeting about a proposal by the Denver Public School board to extend collective bargaining rights to teachers in the district's innovation schools. The findings provide insight into the logics that control how teacher unions and collective bargaining agreements are understood by proponents of autonomous schools and portrayed to the general public through media. The analysis explores how connections to power and status allowed some stakeholder groups to influence the board to revise the policy to one more favorable toward market-oriented school reform. In this case, the dominant narrative that emerged from the stakeholder feedback cycle was one in which the collective bargaining rights of teachers were positioned as a threat to autonomous schools' ability to provide "what's best for kids" in their classrooms.

When the higher education policies and practices of various countries in the world are examined, it is seen that higher education systems are open to innovations and improvements in order to meet the changing and developing needs of society. However, the problems experienced by higher education institutions in Turkey significantly limit both the solution of social problems and the provision of social development. From this point of view, this study aims to comprehensively address the existing problems that prevent higher education institutions from reaching the desired level in Turkey. In the current study, the main problematic areas in higher education in Turkey were determined by document analysis technique. In this context, the study deals with the problems of supply, demand, and imbalance in higher education; the problem of faculty members; autonomy and accountability; and internationalization in higher education are discussed. The results of the study show that higher education in Turkey is insufficient in many aspects to deal with the problems experienced. The study draws attention to some points that need to be addressed in the struggle with the problems experienced in higher education and ends with some regulation suggestions.

Since the implementation of the Excellence Initiative and the Excellence Strategy, German higher education institutions have been restructuring university governance, especially those selected as Universities of Excellence. This study uses a holistic and mission-related integrated governance approach to conduct a qualitative analysis of the governance transformation of German Universities of Excellence, aiming to provoke discussion on transforming governance to optimize organizational effectiveness and sustainable development of German higher education institutions. Transforming governance of German Universities of Excellence involves mission statements, strategic goals, institutional strategies, research, teaching, the third mission, internationalization, global engagement, governance relationships and structures, institutional leadership, funding, autonomy, innovation, digital transformation, quality assurance, and sustainable development, aiming to enhance accountability, performativity, transparency, openness and organizational effectiveness with efficient administrative management in alignment with institutional missions, vision, core values, and strategic goals.

This study focuses on the debate surrounding global policies and practices related to the sector of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), utilizing the Greek policy context as an example. Drawing on the critical education policy studies literature, this paper interrogates the complex concepts of quality and autonomy, which are core in the global agenda. We do this by exploring how the international and national austerity measures, imposed in many countries -- and especially in Greece, marked by a devastating economic crisis in the last decade -- have affected their re-interpretation and translation. Our empirical data suggest that municipal ECEC directors, interviewed in the context of our research, hold diverse views on quality, raising issues of inequality, limited participation and low attainment. The study generates reflections, suggesting that the idea of autonomy has been systematically associated with Greece's economic struggles and therefore understood and re-interpreted by the participants in a constrained way that limits their action. The way these notions are re-contextualized at the municipal level, and the consequences for ECEC provision, pose as key issues of this research.

School autonomy with accountability (SAWA) reforms have developed in diverse forms in Northern Europe. Following processes of decentralization to the municipal and school levels, quality assurance and inspection became key to the test-based accountability agendas of Denmark and England respectively. With an abductive approach, we explore the epistemological potential of a hybrid theoretical framework, which combines assemblage theory with critical realism, to analyze the production stories of these two policy instruments. Drawing on data from an international comparative research project, and more recent policy document analyses, we examine the arrangement of social entities -- discourses, instruments, technologies, artefacts, and actors -- that led to particular accountability outcomes within these specific educational assemblages. We argue that, despite distinctions in their social entities, the dominant state assemblages of accountability in Denmark and England have been captured by the global SAWA and capitalist assemblages at distinct times. Although school actors are incorporated into, and antagonistic towards, the state assemblages, change is limited due to the resilience of the underlying logic of epistemic governance and the desire to improve educational standards for a global knowledge economy. We conclude briefly with an assessment of the utility of the hybrid framework to the comparison of SAWA.