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Like other academic fields, educational policy is being reviewed for the affective component. Analysis is occurring in two forms: (a) the affects of education policy on education, school leaders, teachers and student learning outcomes and (b) text analysis of specific education policies. This chapter explores the representation of emotions in education policy texts, drawing on a theory of social contracts (Rawolle & Vadeboncoeur, 2003; Yeatman, 1996) as a way to explore what is being conveyed to administrators and teachers. This chapter considers the way in which emotions are represented in education policy, through social contract analysis. Social contracts are underpinned by three underlying conditions: consent to be a part of a contract, points of renegotiation through the duration of the contract and mutual accountability to those involved.

Studying Chinese higher education internationalization policy-making requires paying attention to the political ontology of China's top-designed policy-making system before proceeding to methodological approaches. The ontology is two-fold: a fixed reality grounded in the structure and agency of the one-party state, and an emergent reality that derives from the pervasive practice of using policy documents to govern. A two-pronged epistemology is proposed to uncover these realities: interpretative and poststructural problematization. Interpretative problematization helps discern how policy-makers frame a problem–solution discourse in policy documents to achieve predetermined strategic objectives. Contrastingly, poststructural problematization views policy documents as prescriptive texts that offer rules on how to behave. The potential methodologies drawn from the tradition of critical policy sociology can be employed to study these two problematizations, thereby unpacking the fixed and emergent realities.

The history of Nepal gives some insight into its current status as a diverse and multilingual nation with more than 123 languages. Multilingualism is part of the founding philosophy of the country but since it was unified in 1768, government attitudes to language and language education have fluctuated. Though historically education in Nepal has been delivered exclusively in the Nepali language and, more recently, in English, the Government of Nepal is now committed to introducing mother tongue-based, multilingual education (MLE).

Nepal has among the lowest literacy rates in the world (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2015) and the government seeks to turn this trend around, particularly for students who do not speak Nepali as a mother tongue. The commitment to strengthening mother tongue-based MLE features prominently in the Constitution of Nepal (2015), the Act Relating to Compulsory and Free Education (2018) and the School Sector Development Plan (MOEST, 2018). This new constitution declares that “all the mother tongues spoken in Nepal shall be the national language” (2015 article 6).

Implementing these policy commitments in over 120 languages across seven provinces and 753 municipalities is the next challenge for the fledgling democracy. As a “wicked hard” policy area, doing so will require a solid understanding of local attitudes, beliefs, resources, and capacities. This chapter gives a unified review of the history, languages, ideologies, beliefs, and trends that currently influence MLE in Nepal and are likely to play a role into the future.

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the dichotomous nature of two World Bank educational goals and examine how enrollment growth became prioritized over quality in Tanzania. Nestled within the theoretical framework of developmental discourse, the chapter begins with a historical review of World Bank educational policy, exploring Tanzania's lending relationship with the Bank. The chapter next evaluates the new World Bank 2020 educational strategy using the Tanzanian context to draw attention to policy strengths and weaknesses. Finally, using current research regarding World Bank policy in Tanzania, this chapter explores the implications of the new strategy on the next installment of Tanzania's SEDP policy. By locating the intersections of these policies, one may gauge a better understanding as to why the past trend of flooding Tanzania's classrooms with students has had the effect of eroding educational quality.

This chapter explores the colocation of ethnographic and discourse approaches in gender-focused research in comparative and international education. Drawing from the authors’ scholarship in the fields of girls’ education, women’s empowerment, and international education policy and development, this chapter highlights opportunities to interrogate culture in qualitative data through ethnographic and discourse approaches. The chapter concludes with reflection and future directions for these authors and for the field.

Impact mitigation strategies in sub-Saharan Africa on HIV/AIDS in the education sector involved initially the development of education sector policies. This study traces the policy development initiatives, level of implementation, progress made and existing challenges. The study is based on a close (textual) reading of authoritative literature from United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF for the last decade on global monitoring of HIV/AIDS and statistical data. Studies on the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector in sub-Saharan Africa have been brought into focus and themes have been extracted and synthesised from a comparative perspective to guide the development of this chapter. Across the countries, the education sector HIV/AIDS policies had concurrence with the countries’ national HIV and AIDS policy or guidelines, and conformed to international conventions, national laws, policies, guidelines and regulations. Most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa showed a significant decline in HIV prevalence among young women or men and opportunities to improve HIV-prevention knowledge and behaviour still abound. Antiretroviral therapy and other types of treatment have expanded since the early 2000s, but the number of AIDS-related deaths remains high. This chapter fulfils an identified information/resources need and amplifies the progress achieved in the mitigation of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector specifically and humanity in general.

Over the past 30 years, China has made dramatic changes and improvements in various educational areas, including the educational technology field. These changes have been supported by policies initiated by the country's central government. This chapter reviews the historical development of China's educational technology policies, paying particular attention to the evolutionary process, and examining policy features that have influenced Chinese educational development. The Chinese education technology framework encourages the use of educational technology to address more ambitious goals for economic and social development and thus serves as an important catalyst for advancing Chinese education.

In this chapter, increasing education civil society organization (CSO) and coalition participation in education and development policy processes is interpreted from the perspective of network governance theories. In 2015 “deadline” year for the Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals, I consider their significance and influences within the decolonizing and reorienting “policyscapes” that govern the region and/or sub-region that is variously known as Oceania and the Pacific. The chapter is based on continuing research begun in 2007 into education policy processes at multiple discursive and geographical levels of activity, with a focus on the Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and Melanesian sub-regions. A critical educational policy approach is taken, specifically drawn from the application of methods of Critical Discourse Analysis based in critical development and postcolonial theories. These analytical strategies are particularly salient in mapping and understanding how education policy actors, some “new,” have moved toward and through inclusive and protective regionalism(s). These had developed prior to and during the past quarter of a century of significant changes to governments, governing and governance in the Pacific, Oceania, and well beyond.

As China's educational policy and reforms continue to evolve and adjust to shifting social, economic, and political conditions, this chapter provides a template for conceptually framing education research on and in China. To do so this chapter first identifies focus areas in comparative education research related to China, which reflect researcher perspective, perceived advantage, and demonstrated resistance to these educational policy reforms. The authors develop a conceptual framework for comparatively understanding education research on and in China, which focuses on the intersection of comparative education themes, institutional change agents or methods, and Chinese educational reform topics. This conceptual framework specifically accounts for overlap, complexity, and the evolving nature of educational policy reform in China. This chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of comparative education researchers, national policymakers, and consumers of the research using new data and methods as they become available to continue to revise understandings of Chinese educational policy and reform.