ABSTRACT
Introduction In this chapter we want to focus on some of the key features of the new landscape of education policy making evident in many countries across the globe, and, in particular, to consider their effects on the politics of education. Our argument covers three main topics: (1) a consideration of the effects of globalisation on state education policies, with specific consideration of the balance of transnational/ international forces and vernacular or indigenous capacities and responses: this relationship between the global and the local in education is a core preoccupation and relates directly to the possibilities for a politics of education; (2) consideration of the role of new technologies of governance, especially data and measurement in policy, and as a form of governing education, what might be termed ‘policy as numbers’ (Rose 1999), and their effects on educational politics: such considerations are located within an argument about the emergence of a globalised education policy field between global pressures and local effects and (3) discussion of the relationship between research and policy making in education, with particular emphasis on the ways in which evidence-based/informed policy making acts on and selectively steers research, and thus affects the production of independent analysis and critique of policy.
