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This chapter presents empirical results of an analysis of the content of education reform globally in nine policy areas during the recent wave of neoliberal reforms between 1970 and 2018. It draws on data from the World Education Reform Database (WERD), the most comprehensive database to date of education reforms around the world. The results show a dramatic increase in policy reform discourse on improving educational quality compared to reforms in other policy areas between 1970 and 2018, with the pace accelerating from 1990 onwards. Expanding access to education remains an important priority. Access reform discourse slightly increases during the peak period of education reform from 1992 to 2009, before leveling off. The results also show a significant rise of reforms in policy areas related to accountability discourse. Overall, the descriptive trends presented in this chapter complement case study literature on neoliberal education reform and suggests directions further cross-national research.

Narratives about racism and equity in schools have been documented in varying degrees of detail and accuracy in the news media (Farhi, 2012). Thus, race is front and center in the news reports, demonstrating how education policies are detrimental to the Island while also contending that policy drivers of Ley de Reforma Educativa de Puerto Rico (LREPR) are ignoring the racialized consequences of these neoliberal policies.

To examine the implementation of LREPR in education discourse in the media, a content analysis on texts in the Puerto Rican media was conducted. To conduct the analysis, an original dataset of texts from the four major newspapers in Puerto Rico: El Nuevo Dia, El Vocero, Primera Hora and The San Juan Daily Star (n = 119) was created.

The study shows how the collective resistance of Puerto Ricans towards LREPR suggests racialized consequences for this “post”-colonial Island as they engage in dialogues about property rights and dispute policy discourse. Data suggests the alarming effects of neoliberalism as perceived by Puerto Rican citizens, while highlighting shared concerns aligned with elements of critical race theory such as colorblindness and property rights.

This study breaks ground by identifying a new intellectual pursuit of charter schools purchasing land or buildings in marginalized communities. It argues that the news coverage demonstrates how Puerto Rican citizens have illuminated the purchase of land for charter schools, viewing it as an act of colonialism veiled as market competition and economic improvement for the Island. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

The findings from this research contribute to how critical race theory is used and conceptualized in the educational leadership field. Additionally, the study contributes to the field of research by conducting a content analysis of newspaper articles in Puerto Rico, looking through the CRT lens to illuminate systemic racism that is present in media accounts of education.

This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of key stakeholders working with homeless people during the implementation of universal credit during the austerity years.

The literature on austerity reveals welfare reforms’ impact on support services staff. Service providers’ perceptions of the impact of austerity-led policies and welfare reform via nine interviews with people working in homelessness organisations in Brighton and Hove in the UK. Service providers see the situation for their service users has gotten worse and that the policies make it more difficult to extricate themselves from their current situation. Three central themes relating to the impact of austerity-led welfare reforms were, namely, Universal Credit: the imposition of a precarious livelihood on welfare claimants; a double-edged sword: “If people are sanctioned: people can’t pay”; and “Hard to maintain my own mental equilibrium”.

More precisely, this paper captures service providers’ perceptions and experiences of the impact of austerity-led policies on their services and how they believe this, in turn, impacts their clients and their own lives.

The dimension cuts across service provision to vulnerable people and is intertwined with health and well-being outcomes. Austerity is detrimental to the health of service users and their clients. It is known that when it comes to the health and well-being of the most vulnerable, who have suffered most from the impacts of austerity policies. However, in times of open austerity, it falls also on those trying to ease their suffering.

The data suggest that policies were developed and accentuated by austerity, which led to the stripping of welfare support from vulnerable people. This process has impacted the people who rely on welfare and service providers.

The study explores diverse and critical understandings of “international” in a higher education curriculum context, situated in a curriculum review of a postgraduate taught programme entitled “International Education” at a university located in England. Our study problematises and decentres some dominant, normalised notions of “international”, exploring critical possibilities of engaging with the term for higher education internationalisation.

We examined a set of programme curriculum documents and conducted a survey exploring teaching staff’s uses and interpretations of “international” in their design and delivery of course units. Through a thematic analysis of the dataset, we identify what “international” might mean or how it may be missing across the curriculum.

Our findings suggest a locally-developed conceptualisation of “international” beyond the normalised interpretation of “international” as the inclusion or comparison of multiple nations, and different, other countries around the global world. More diverse, critical understandings of the term have been considered, including international as intercultural, competences, ethics, languages and methods. The study provides an example approach to reflective scholarship that programmes can undergo in order to develop clarity, depth and purposefulness into internationalisation as enacted in a local curriculum context.

The study provides a first step towards establishing clearer guidelines on internationalising the curriculum by higher education institutions and individual programmes in order to challenge a superficial engagement of “international” within internationalisation. It exemplifies a starting point for making purposeful steps away from normalised notions and assumptions of international education and facilitates development towards its critical, ethically-grounded opportunities.

This article aims to examine the manifestation of coloniality within social studies curricula and explore strategies for rejecting colonial paradigms through teaching praxis. The author presents a curriculum that unveils the narratives of Linnentown, a local Black community, to examine the impacts of colonial legacies on people's everyday lives.

Using the teaching and learning cycle framework, the author demonstrates the integration of sequenced embodied and multimodal activities. Furthermore, the author utilizes the concept of critical place-based education (CPBE) to demonstrate how critical pedagogies within the context of place can cultivate transformative learning experiences.

By guiding students to critically analyze the sociopolitical conditions of Linnentown residents, CPBE, paired with multimodal activities, helps challenge dominant narratives and empowers students to become agents of change in their local communities.

This curriculum fosters a nuanced understanding of structural oppression, empowers students to develop critical awareness and social agency and guides youth in confronting settler colonialism within and beyond their communities.

This paper explores working mothers’ coping strategies concerning paid and unpaid work in Chile and Argentina during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper aimed to understand the influence of cultural norms on motherhood and neoliberal workplace practices on mothers’ sensemaking processes and coping strategies. This study focuses on mothers living in Chile and Argentina where governments established mandatory lockdowns between March and September 2020. Drawing on the notion of neoliberal motherhood, women’s demands were analyzed when paid work and mothering duties collide in time and space.

Open-ended interviews were conducted with 17 women in Chile and Argentina. All interviewees had at least 1 child below the age of 6 and were working from home during the lockdown.

Neoliberal workplace demands, and disadvantageous government policies greatly heightened the dual burdens of working mothers. Women were expected to fulfill the discourses of the neoliberal worker and the good mother, while also adopting additional strategies in the wake of the lockdown. The data highlights mothers’ strategies to cope with care and work duties by adjusting to new routines involving their partners, relatives and the wider community.

The generalizability of the results is limited by the small sample of 17 interviewees, all from middle to middle-upper class. The changing scenario due to Covid-19 makes the collected data not sufficient to grasp the impact of the pandemic, as during the interviews (December 2020 and January 2021) the process was still ongoing.

Organizations should assess their role in the management of paid and unpaid work for both genders, as the neoliberal discourse views the worker as masculine, full-time, always available and productive, ignoring women’s additional care duties outside of the workplace.

The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to reflect on care work and gender, collective versus individual responses to care and work demands and the idea of organizing.

Internationalisation and academic mobility have long been integral parts, although serving different purposes in the higher education industry. Internationalisation has played a crucial role in facilitating academic exchange, knowledge sharing, research partnerships and collaborative innovation. However, the rise of neoliberalism has introduced the market forces of global capitalism that have significantly impacted higher education worldwide – invading the sector with neoliberal market values. This chapter aims to explore the impact of neoliberalism on the internationalisation of higher education in Africa, with a specific focus on trends in international student mobility. The chapter argues that the influence of neoliberalism on international mobility extends beyond market dynamics, encompassing discussions on hegemony within international knowledge systems, where African countries and institutions often find themselves marginalised. The study relies on published materials and publicly available statistical data from both governmental and non-governmental organisations. By examining the interplay between neoliberalism and the process of internationalisation in higher education, this chapter sheds light on the intricate and multifaceted aspects of both concepts, as well as their practical implications for international student mobility. Moreover, the chapter reflects on the implications of neoliberal entanglements for the prospects of internationalisation in African higher education.