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The purpose of the paper is to provide a critical reply to Robert Lingard's close reading of a previously published paper of the present author's, “Meaning, truth, and information.”

The approach adopted in this paper is an examination of Lingard's argument and counter‐points, employing (primarily) logical and rhetorical analysis of his claims.

While some of Lingard's criticisms are legitimate and must be admitted, many have to be subjected to rebuttal on the basis of misreading, logical error, and discursive misapprehension of points made in the original article.

Since the present paper is a reply to another author's work, originality is constrained by the arguments and claims made by that author. That said, additional analysis is added to the matters of meaning, truth, and information in an effort to clarify and expand upon the essence of the original article.

The chapter demonstrates that one way to read recent developments in national curriculum in nations around the globe is as both expressions of and responses to globalization. Additionally, the chapter argues that curriculum making today is affected by ever-changing imbrications between local, national, regional and global relationships. Examples of this include the curriculum impacts actual and potential of the OECD's testing regime and aspirations in relation to curriculum and the EU's creation of a European education policy space. The more recent rise of new nationalisms and ethnonationalism is seen to have potential impact on national curriculum. Some consideration is also given to the content of the curriculum and the contemporary focus on both disciplinary knowledge and on what sorts of people schools should produce; both it is argued are responses to globalization. The ways the message systems (curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation) sit in a symbiotic relationship with each other and the impact of the strengthened significance of international and large-scale assessments on the enactment of the curriculum are also documented. Some brief account is provided of the enhanced involvement of EdTech companies producing online curricula and the ways the pandemic has accelerated this development with the concerning potential for the privatization of the curriculum.

This chapter focuses on a new school-level instrument for international benchmarking and policy learning – the OECD’s PISA-based Test for Schools (“PISA for Schools”) – and how it helps to constitute new global spaces and relations of education policymaking and governance. Unlike main PISA, PISA for Schools assesses school performance in reading, mathematics, and science against the schooling systems measured by the main PISA test. Schools are thus positioned within a globally commensurate space of measurement and comparison, and are encouraged to engage with, and learn from, the policy expertise proffered by “high-performing” international schooling systems and the OECD itself. Drawing suggestively across literature and theorizing around new spatialities associated with globalization, the “becoming topological” of culture and “power-topologies,” and informed by document analysis and interviews with 33 policy actors from across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, the chapter examines how PISA for Schools helps the OECD to directly “reach into” local schooling spaces. This respatialized PISA for Schools, or “PISA to Schools”, provides the OECD with the means to influence how schooling is practised and conceived at the level of local policy implementation, while limiting mediation by national and/or subnational politics. Moreover, the school-to-system performance comparisons enabled by PISA for Schools arguably provide one of the first – if not the only – international data-driven catalysts of school-level reform. This furthers the relevance and diffusion of “lessons” from main PISA and the OECD to schools themselves, and helps extend the epistemic communities through which the OECD practices its global epistemological governance of education.

The growth of the pick-up industry all over the world and in Israeli society in recent years has been called ‘reverse sexism’. This phenomenon reflects how young men in hierarchical and competitive culture suffer from what they perceive to be fragile or partial masculinity, and are misled by the pick-up industry to learn and practice aggressive seduction techniques. All to improve their ability to gain sex and, therefore, to become ‘real men’. The discourse, language and concepts taught in these pick-up courses echo the traditional approach of hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy, reinforcing rape culture on the one hand, and the vulnerability and suffering of these men on the other.

The key questions explored in this volume converge around issues of educational governance in the context of globalization. The individual chapters each contribute to the goals of assessing the development of the educational agenda of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and providing evidence on the trajectories through which the organization’s programs and policies have directly and indirectly influenced and affected diverse educational systems. The chapter explores these issues in more depth, drawing on the perspectives presented in the volume’s individual chapters. The first section provides a discussion of the contexts that have given rise to the OECD as a key global education policy actor. Following this brief historical overview, some of the key findings raised by the volume’s authors are examined in the context of wider literature on global education policy. Collectively, the chapters raise important questions about the role of nation-states in educational planning, the scope and spatiality of international assessments such as PISA and TALIS, and the complexity of evidence and expertise in global, national, and local educational policy-making. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the volume’s work for the wider field of comparative and international education.

This chapter focuses on theories and methods for policy studies in higher education, in an era of accelerating globalisation. Policy is increasingly conceived as a complex process which extends from global to local levels, and is contested at all levels. At the same time, higher education has assumed a more central role in the development of a so-called ‘global knowledge economy’. Thus, the re-conceptualisation of ‘policy’, along with the repositioning of the role of higher education in globalising times, call for a rethink on theory and method for higher education policy studies. With attempts to cover a broad global-local span, single theoretical framings are often insufficient, and theoretical eclecticism potentially offers more comprehensive insights into dynamic policy processes than single theories alone. In particular, the combination of critical theory and post-structural theory has presented a fruitful way to build policy ‘trajectory’ and ‘network’ analyses across multiple levels and sites.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the mediating role of organisational commitment in the relationship between work‒life balance (WLB) and organisational performance of female construction professionals in the Nigerian construction industry.

The study empirically examined WLB of female professionals in medium- and large-sized Nigerian construction organisations. The data collected were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that there is a positive relationship between WLB and organisational commitment, and that organisational commitment mediates the impact of WLB on organisational performance.

One of the limitations of this research is the cross-sectional nature of the study and the nature of data collected, which is related to female gender. Efforts should, therefore, be made to further this study by examining the impact of WLB on both male and female professionals in construction.

This paper presents an empirical research on the significance of family-friendly initiatives within construction organisations in Nigerian context, and the results of the study have implications for industry practitioners and academics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-family experience of projects managers working in the construction industry, and identify how they manage their work-family interface.

Structured interviews were conducted with nine construction project managers working in the commercial sector, and data were subject to thematic analysis.

Role conditions were found to impact on participants’ work-family interface, identified as working hours, accountability, and the stress arising from accountability. Participants identified four key strategies used to manage their work-family interface: managing work-based stress, having a supportive partner, prioritising non-work time for family, and trading off activities. Despite having to limit time with family and trade off social and leisure activities, participants did not report negative work-to-family spillover. All participants shared a passion for their work. Findings can be explained using the heavy worker investment model, which proposes that job devotion is linked to psychological well-being, decreases in work-family conflict (WFC), and work satisfaction.

Contrary to previous research, findings suggest that construction project managers did not experience inter-role conflict between their work and family domains. It is recommended that further research explore these findings using the heavy work investment (HWI) framework which considers how internal and external predictors shape workers’ behaviour, and whether HWI typologies moderate the experience of WFC.

This paper aims to establish and illustrate the levels of awareness of work‐life balance policies within the surveying profession in Australia and New Zealand. The culture and characteristics of the Australian and New Zealand work force are to be identified. The key aspects included in work‐life balance policies are to be illustrated and the perceived benefits for the surveying profession are to be noted. The paper seeks to posit that it is vital to comprehend the levels of awareness of work‐life balance issues within the surveying profession first, so that benchmarking may occur over time within the profession and second, that comparisons may be drawn with other professions.

There is a growing body of research into work‐life balance and the built environment professions. Using a questionnaire survey of the whole RICS qualified surveying profession in Australia and New Zealand, this paper identifies the awareness of work‐life balance benefits within the surveying profession.

This research provides evidence that awareness of the issues and options is unevenly spread amongst professional surveyors in the region. With shortages of professionals and an active economy the pressures on existing employees looks set to rise and therefore this is an area which needs to be benchmarked and revisited with a view to adopting best practice throughout the sector. The implications are that employers ignore work‐life balance issues at their peril.

There is much to be learned from an increased understanding of work‐life balance issues for professionals in the surveying discipline. The consequences of an imbalance between work and personal or family life is emotional exhaustion, cynicism and burnout. The consequences for employers or surveying firms are reduced effectiveness and profitability and increased employee turnover or churn.

Leading on from Ellison's UK surveying profession study and Lingard and Francis's Australian civil engineering and construction industry studies, this paper seeks to raise awareness of the benefits of adopting work‐life balance policies within surveying firms and to establish benchmarks of awareness within the Australian and New Zealand surveying profession.

This chapter discusses the development of evidence-informed practice in Australian education. It highlights growing system-wide aspirations and support for Australian teachers, school leaders, and jurisdictions to be engaging productively with research and evidence. Our aim here is to step back from these developments and consider them in the context of: (1) the nature and distinctive characteristics of the Australian school system; (2) what is known (and not known) about Australian educators' use of research and evidence; and (3) recent insights into enablers and barriers to research use in Australian schools. We argue that the development of evidence-informed practice in Australia needs to take careful account of the complex history and fatalist nature of the wider school system. This will make it possible to identify and work with the productive places that exist within a system of this kind. It is also important to recognize that research use in schools is a topic that has been investigated surprisingly little in Australia relative to other countries internationally. Current policy aspirations around evidence-informed approaches therefore need to be matched by greater efforts to understand the dynamics of research engagement in Australian schools and school systems.