Problematizing the location of comparative numbered data in national policy-making in education. The securitization of school timetables in Cyprus

This paper seeks to offer a more nuanced understanding of national policy-making in education by problematizing a specific topos of the field of global education policy. It specifically argues that in an attempt to identify new forms of power in education and their effects, ‘the topos of governing by comparison and numbers’ overlooks the co-existence of permeological and immunological responses to international comparative numbered data in localities as well as the unintended effects of this uneasy co-existence on national policy and reform. To illustrate this argument, the paper explores the controversial timetables reform initiative in the Republic of Cyprus during the period 2014–15. (DIPF/Orig.

The discursive (re)construction of national identity in Cyprus and England with special reference to history textbooks : a comparative study

This thesis is an analysis of national identity construction in Cyprus and England in two historical times: the period following the Greek and Turkish military offensives in Cyprus (1974-93), and the period of the Conservative administration in Britain (1979-97). It examines identity formations in history textbooks across the two settings and addresses their relationship with intellectual and political constructs of identity.\ud These periods were moments of a metamorphosis of identity in both settings. This identity reconstruction was firstly materialised in the signifying practices of politicians and intellectuals. As an effect of the emergence ofnew nationalist discourses in the political and intellectual fields was the production of new history textbooks, making it possible for the national image to be also reconstituted in and through them. New identities were articulated in the field of school history but their redefinition varied within and across the two settings. Variations within each setting were primarily determined by the particular features of the social domain in which the construction of identity took place. Across the settings, they were mainly shaped by different genres of school history writing. Despite their differences, the new identities across the two cultural settings and social fields shared certain similar motifs - fragmentation, hybridity and ambivalence.\ud It is therefore suggested that the making of identity in history textbooks cannot be understood by focusing solely on textbooks. Knowledge of the specificities of the historical, the intellectual, the political and the educational layers of the context in which they are embedded as well as the complex linkages between identifications articulated in these layers, is required. Based on this finding, this thesis attempts to formulate a theoretical model that enhances the understanding ofhow national identity is produced, sustained, transformed and dismantled discursively in history textbooks. \u

Thinking Comparatively about the Textbook : Oscillating Between the National, the International and the Global

This article suggests an imagining of textbooks as sites oscillating between three different but interrelated archives: the national, the international, and the global. Any textbook, it is argued, draws on themes and perspectives from these three archives and this hybridization of the textbook produces ambivalence. Unclear and ambivalent messages in the textbook are signs of difficulties in accommodating the competing narratives of community and identity that are constituted in the national, the international, and the global. This specific approach to textbooks is discussed with examples of social studies textbooks from England and Greece, especially history textbooks

What is the Purpose of School Inspections? Functional Determination of School Inspection beyond Control

Dietrich F, Heinrich M, Lambrecht M. What is the Purpose of School Inspections? Functional Determination of School Inspection beyond Control. In: Kotthoff H-G, Klerides E, eds. Governing Educational Spaces. Knowledge, Teaching and Learning in Transition. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers; 2015: 93-104