ABSTRACT
Chapter five provides a synthesis of the book's main contributions. I identify three dominant arguments emerging across the book and consider the implications and possibilities associated with each as we look to the future. First, I consider the entangled emergence of forms of order and disorder that have emerged since the education revolution period. The current state of policy dis/order underlines major limits to ‘alignment thinking’ and the allure of order upon which it rests. It also illustrates a crucial difference between what policies aim to do and what they actually do in practice. Second, I argue that the education revolution has driven major shifts in power, control and authority across the Australian federation, which pose complex questions as we look to the future. Areas of policy that in previous decades were more unambiguously the preserve of states and territories are now negotiated nationally through a complex policy ecology that is significantly influenced by the federal government. These changes cast new light on perennial debates about who does (and who should) control schooling policy moving forward. Third, I argue that recent reforms must be understood in the context of broader global changes in society and public policy. Increasingly global and polycentric arrangements are generating new conditions for the cross-pollination of policy ideas and practices, and are redefining dominant forms of evidence, expertise and influence. I conclude the book by returning to insights from assemblage theory to consider the importance of imagining a new kind of assemblage in Australian schooling.
