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This chapter draws together the findings about both the Bologna actors and instruments to explain the mechanism of the Bologna reform in Ukraine until 2014 and its place in Europeanisation in the post-Soviet context.

This research demonstrates that continuity was mainly perpetuated by the Ministry of Education and Science, and change was facilitated by civil organisations. There was a lot of fluidity in the interaction of old practices and policy innovation in Bologna in Ukraine. The interaction between the path dependency and change was primarily a gradual chaotic, yet creative, and shared build-up of minor innovations by different higher education actors. These innovations in the development of the Bologna instruments may be seen as leading to more substantial transformations over time.

The research findings may also serve as a first step towards a reconceptualisation of the Europeanisation process particularly in the post-Soviet context in the first couple of decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bologna in Ukraine can be seen as an illustration of the ways in which Europeanisation may not always necessitate the elimination of past conventions and practices – indeed, in a policy field such as education, abandoning history and tradition would have been a futile endeavour. Policy continuity in the post-Soviet context may be a foundation in the Europeanisation process during which minor innovations are slowly yet continuously being accumulated. This foundation shapes the nature of changes. Therefore, perhaps, the debate regarding a slow pace of Europeanisation in the post-Soviet space might be erroneous, since it carries a hidden assumption – that it is slow in relation to a much faster Europeanisation and resulting transformations in the EU. Such a comparison should be revisited in light of a potential difference in the nature of Europeanisation in the two spaces and the acknowledgement of growing overlaps between the two spaces as well.

This chapter offers a pedagogical, analytical and heuristic framework for the critical analysis of higher education policy texts, and of the processes and motivations behind their articulations, grounded in considerations of relationships and flows between language, power and discourse. Theoretically the framework draws on critical discourse analysis, which provides a systematic framework for exegesis, analysis and interpretation, uncloaking the ways in which language (and other semiotic modes) work within discourse as agents and actors in the realisation, construction and perception of relations of power. The framework itself comprises two elements: one concerned with contextualising and one with deconstructing. The contextualisation element of the frame comprises three parts: temporal context, policy levers/drivers and warrant. The second element of deconstruction engages with text and discourse using a number of analytical lenses and tools derived from critical discourse analysis and critical literacy analysis.

Finland's performance in PISA has created considerable interest in the country's education system, to ascertain what has made Finland so successful in the survey. In reference to the phenomenon, this chapter discusses cross-national attraction, policy borrowing, the effect of Finland in PISA, and its influence on education policy. This chapter explores at length the theoretical background of cross-national attraction and policy borrowing, also investigating cases that have already occurred. It discusses Finland's role as the new object of cross-national attraction and eventual policy borrowing. The chapter incorporates research into the reasons for Finland's success in PISA, the possibilities of policy transfer from Finland, and delves into the likelihood of policy implications as a result of Finland in PISA. This cross-national attraction denotes the first stage in policy borrowing; however, comparative educationalists, for years, have warned about the uncritical transfer of education policy. Research in Finland has revealed many reasons for the country's PISA success stem from contextual factors: those related to historical, cultural, societal, and political features of Finland. Therefore, policy borrowing from Finland needs to heed warnings of past comparativists. The new phenomenon of Finland in PISA has generated much curiosity from those in education, educational policy, and politics. Policymakers are keen to incorporate Finland's educational features into their education systems. PISA and Finland's performance in the survey influence educational policy. This illustrates the importance the warnings of past and present comparative educationalists in order to prevent uncritical policy borrowing.

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.

This chapter reports on findings from a wider research project undertaken in Portugal. It focuses on the views of school principals with respect to (new) policy on the school curriculum. School principals have to balance conflicting goals and to manage tensions of implementation, particularly in a context of intense school reform. As policy gatekeepers and interpreters, school leaders have a pivotal role to play in how policies are framed, managed, and discussed in the context of their schools. Data presented in this text are drawn from a wider 3-year study. Findings point to the existence of contradictory elements in the principals' accounts. In general, they are critical of the new curriculum policy and question the adequacy of the conditions currently existing in schools to put it into operation. Overall, the regulatory and centralized orientation stands in sharp contrast to the very essence of the policies that call for local, contextualized, and innovative solutions. Such findings need to be analyzed within a centralized and bureaucratic education system in which a logic of control and standardized management of education still dominates.

In the context of globalisation, setting standards for excellence in education is considered necessary to enhance human capital to ensure future global competitiveness of the national economies (Rasmussen & Lingard, 2018). In line with education thus being set up as the basis for the economy, the development of talent has become an important part of the education political agenda in Denmark. This agenda claims that the Danish mass of talent should develop to a high level, and even more students should reach the highest levels of excellence (Ministry of Education, 1997). Accordingly, it labels the next generation of students ‘the mass of talent’.

This chapter questions the terms of talent applied in global education policies and their enactment into other agendas of concurrent standardisation and diversity. Empirically, the analysis of the wider policy context draws on policy texts at EU, OECD, and national level, in particular a ministerial report from 2011 (Rasmussen & Ydesen, 2020), as well as information materials and ethnographic case study research on a talent programme at upper secondary school level in Denmark (Bomholt & Rasmussen, 2020).

The analysis departs in an ambition to uncover the questions, how do global education policies frame standards for talent in a national context and how does this standardisation interact with the standards produced in the local programme? Therefore, the chapter focuses on the terms of talent applied in policy contexts at different levels of the specific case. For this, it employs the analytical approach of policy technologies (Ball, 2008), which involves viewing talent from the three policy technological perspectives of market, management and performance. They form a generic part of global convergence and work across the public sector as a whole.

It combines the empirical levels of macro and micro by referring to policy text and enactment at the global, national and local school level. The combination means first outlining the historical background for the policies in question and then considering how local actors bring their terms of talent into action at municipal and school level (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012), emphasising the different actor rationalities.

The aim of this chapter is to stimulate debate and critical thinking about the relevance and effectiveness – especially for ‘non-core’ areas – of prevailing methodological approaches to entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) research and policy development and to argue for the exploration of critical realism (CR) as a potential framework for researchers, practitioners and policymakers. I argue that prevailing theoretical and methodological frameworks are insufficient to enable researchers to adequately understand the dynamics of diverse EE or for policymakers to act appropriately on research findings. I posit CR as an alternative framework, providing a ‘lens’ through which researchers, policymakers and other ecosystem stakeholders can collaboratively explore the role of context and its interplay with agency. CR addresses the disadvantages associated with deterministic models of entrepreneurship and ‘Valley envy’ policy prescriptions, thus generating more meaningful insights for policy and practice, especially in relation to ‘non-core’ areas.

This chapter will provide an overview of Bachelor’s degrees into teaching in Scotland. It will consider how policy contexts shaped the original Bachelor degrees in Education (BEd) and more recently how policy discourse and texts have helped to shape the development of the new Bachelor's degrees in Education now on offer in Scotland.

Whilst the traditional Bachelor's degree in Education for many years remained the main undergraduate route for teacher education in Scotland, the publication of ‘Teaching Scotland's Future’ (Donaldson, 2011) recommended a gradual phasing out of the traditional undergraduate degree and the development of a new Bachelor's in Education ‘concurrent’ or ‘combined’ four-year undergraduate route. Donaldson's ‘vision’ of concurrency has been interpreted in many different ways across Scotland's universities resulting in a rich variety of new Bachelor's degrees in Education reflecting a range of structural, contextual, attitudinal and environmental constraints and opportunities which have influenced the nature of ‘concurrency’ at each institution.

The chapter traces how a number of influential policy texts from the 1960s onwards have influenced the repositioning of the new Bachelor degrees, which in turn aimed to broaden student teachers' understanding of teaching in the twenty-first century.