Mobilities of policy and mobile parents – creating a new dynamic in policy borrowing within state schooling

Professor Claire Maxwell from the Department of Sociology has contributed to the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education with the article ‘Mobilities of policy and mobile parents – creating a new dynamic in policy borrowing within state schooling’. The article is co-written with Miri Yemini, Tel Aviv University, Israel.

The article focuses on the transformations imposed on schools by individual parents, arguing that schools as modern organisations change not only through top-down pressures orchestrated by an array of international organisations, for-profit companies and media as shown in previous research. They also change through the agency of mobile parents, who seek to import reforms from elsewhere, based on their previous schooling experiences abroad.

The authors focus on a specific group of middle class parents, who are continuously mobile, moving between global cities for employment. The paper brings into the discussion the role of individual parental strategies as they seek to promote education policy-borrowing. By applying the theoretical lens of stakeholder identification and salience, using a multi case study research design, the authors suggest that parents express high levels of power, legitimacy and a sense of urgency, thus being able to successfully advocate for change. They also argue that while exploring organisational reform occurring due to the globalisation of education, we must view parents as central actors in this new space.

The article can be accessed here