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This essay focuses on an argument that challenges the notion of market reform as a desirable idea. It examines how market requirements, accounting practices, political intervention and organizational conditions interact and create conflicts in the implementation of market reform. In our case study, we aim to elucidate the detrimental effects of expanding pricing mechanisms into areas typically untouched.

The essay adopts a critical perspective toward the marketization in the public sector organizations based on the authors' previous studies and observations of the reforms in Swedish schools over the last 30 years. The case is conceptualized within Callon’s framework of the sociology of worth.

The paper provides an example of market dynamics introduced without the presence of pricing and qualification mechanisms, resulting in a trial-and-error situation. In this context, we document and problematize a trend toward marketization that has had negative consequences for Swedish schools. In doing so, the paper shows how market requirements, accounting practices, political interventions and organizational conditions interact and create conflicts during the implementation of market reforms. The case shows the emergence of a new economic entity and its underlying rationale, the quantification/pricing mechanism, with a special emphasis on the role of accounting and the repercussions on subjectivities as values shift.

This paper follows up on the New Public Financial Management (NPFM) global warning debate on the emergence of pricing/charging mechanisms in public services. It provides a critical overview of the diffusion and relevance of accounting evaluation processes to sustain continuous reforms, despite claimed criticisms, limitations and (un)intended consequences. The paper also provides some reflections on new avenues for further research and some possible ways out for accounting studies.

This study aims to examine the nature and extent of political dynamics (power struggles and contestations) among internal and external school stakeholders in the school evaluation processes and their influence on the objectivity and consistency of evaluations.

This study used a purposive sampling method to examine seven secondary schools in Dodoma Region, which were key in piloting the School Quality Assurance (SQA) policy implementation in 2018. The selected schools were government boarding institutions with long histories, managed by School Management Teams and Governing Boards that influenced school decision-making. These schools had regular SQA visits and produced School Self-Evaluation and Whole-School Evaluation reports, which served as the primary data sources. Data were analysed using a method that involved sorting, coding, identifying patterns and applying theory to interpret the findings. The analysis focused on discrepancies and power dynamics in school evaluations, particularly how internal and external evaluators’ roles were represented in the reports. Ethical considerations were ensured through confidentiality, pseudonymizing participants and obtaining clearance from relevant authorities. This study’s reliability and trustworthiness were enhanced through consistent data collection protocols, a transparent coding framework and triangulation of sources. This research offers insights into the politics of SQA policy implementation, highlighting tensions and power dynamics in school evaluations and revealing gaps between policy and practice.

This study identifies the SQA policy discourses that were tools and sites of power struggles and contestations among internal and external evaluators in all six quality domains. These political dynamics impacted the objectivity and consistency of evaluation outcomes due to subjectivity among evaluators. Internal evaluation had a positive image by offering higher quality indicators than external evaluation in most case study schools.

Policy documents provide a high-level overview, often missing the nuanced realities of school implementation. While updated periodically, they may not reflect current practices or challenges. These documents typically present an idealized vision of education, which might not align with actual outcomes. Analysing them alone can overlook the perspectives of teachers, students, parents and other stakeholders directly impacted by the policies. Informal practices and adaptations in response to policy directives may not be documented, and the interpretation of such documents can vary widely, leading to subjective analysis. In addition, policy documents lack empirical data on the effectiveness and impact of the policies.

This study highlights the need for clear and consistent evaluation criteria to reduce discrepancies between internal and external evaluators. It also underscores the importance of training and support for school-based evaluators to ensure reliable assessments. Moreover, this study calls for addressing political dynamics influencing evaluation objectivity, ensuring that evaluations genuinely reflect school performance. Finally, the findings advocate for involving all stakeholders in the evaluation process to enhance transparency and accountability.

This study has important social implications. It reveals how political dynamics can affect the fairness and transparency of school evaluations, potentially impacting stakeholders’ trust in the education system. This study highlights the need for equitable and unbiased evaluation practices to ensure that all schools are fairly assessed and supported. This can lead to better educational outcomes, as schools receive appropriate feedback and resources. Moreover, involving community members in the evaluation process can foster greater accountability and community engagement in educational development.

This study provides original value by addressing the intersection of political dynamics and educational evaluation. It uniquely examines how power struggles and political influences affect the objectivity and consistency of quality assurance practices. By highlighting discrepancies between internal and external evaluators, this study offers fresh insights into the challenges of implementing educational policies. This research contributes to the broader discourse on educational reform by advocating for more transparent and equitable evaluation processes, thereby enhancing policy effectiveness and educational outcomes.

This paper examines the impact of lived experiences and attitudinal blueprints on researchers within the context of masculinities research. It explores the negotiation of gendered roles, exploring how personal narratives shape our engagement in gender research and the collaborative process of meaning-making. It discusses the methodological tensions surrounding narrative research and naturalistic inquiry when investigating masculinities.

Adopting a feminist post-structuralist lens, this paper analyses the discursive nature of masculinities and its theoretical and historical construction, alongside the use of narrative research methodologies in research practices.

The paper reinforces the importance of feminist frameworks in deconstructing gender norms and challenging implicit assumptions. The role of reflexivity in the research process and the potential for researcher subjectivity as a resource is emphasised. Drawing on existing scholarship and the authors' empirical research experiences, the importance of researcher reflexivity in recognising the potential for gender performativity in the research setting is emphasised, especially in gendered research spaces and when engaging with methodologies tacitly understood through gendered ideological lenses.

The paper contributes to ongoing scholarly discussions exploring the intersection of gender, theory and practice.

The paper's theoretical exploration contributes to understandings of gender dynamics in research and offers insights into the complexities of conducting masculinities research from a critical perspective. The paper contributes to ongoing scholarly discussions exploring the intersection of gender, theory and practice.

Practitioner architects who teach design move between their professional practice and teaching, and these different work contexts and cultures shape their identity. When teaching, they need to self-regulate in order to perform independently and develop their teaching. This paper discusses what practitioner architects who teach design say they do in design studios, their conceptions about roles in design studios, how they develop their ability for evaluative judgement and shape their identity.

This study employs case study methodology. It relies on data collected via semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The audio recordings were transcribed and analysed by identifying persistent words, phrases and ideas that were grouped into themes. Each “idea” is drawn from terms used by participants (e.g. characterising aspects of their practices) and researchers’ interpretations and/or based on existing ideas (e.g. found in the literature). The “theory of practice architectures” is employed as a framework of analysis to investigate what professional architects who teach design say they do in studios and their conceptions of their roles, design teaching and development of teaching expertise.

Findings show that practitioner architects who teach design employ evaluative judgement to provide constructive feedback to students and monitor the quality of their own projects. They also use evaluative judgement to assess the quality of their own teaching and hence self-regulate their professional development as design educators. Participants do not identify as teachers; rather their identity is firmly rooted in professional practice.

The study focuses on practitioner architects who teach design and explores how they develop their ability for evaluative judgement and shape their identity through the lens of “theory of practice architectures” which offered a comprehensive view of practices as encompassing conceptions, intentions, actions and outcomes.

We articulate cycles of creative storying and data analysis and the wonder that motivated the project by detailing our reading, thinking and writing processes to contribute to the conceptual and practical literature on collaborative writing as method.

This paper documents a process of collaborative writing as method that produced a co-written fictional narrative that evokes questions about schooling.

Our process began with world-building for our fictional future, creating characters to serve as a lens for analysis. From our discussions of the data, we crafted a plotline to present our themes in coherent story. As we explored and shared our readings, interdisciplinarity shaped our project in unique ways.

Throughout, our collaboration and fiction-writing opened spaces for wonder, interdisciplinarity and joy that may inspire other researchers to engage in collaborative and/or creative writing processes.

Adding to the rich literature of arts-based research methods, we contribute our reflections on the pragmatics of incorporating reading, writing and thinking for collaboration and creative writing as qualitative research methods for document analysis.

This study intended to bridge the gap by investigating Chinese master’s students’ perceptions of their supervisors’ use of evaluative language in feedback, from both cognitive and affective perspectives, at a Sino-foreign university in mainland China.

Employing a qualitative research design, 12 participants from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Economics and Finance were included. Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis.

The findings show that students perceive directive and actionable evaluative language, as well as evaluative language aligned with assessment criteria as effective, facilitating improvement and self-regulated learning. However, the use of evaluative language can evoke mixed emotions, with linguistic devices and inadequate follow-up explanations reinforcing negative feelings. Additionally, power imbalances between supervisors and students influence feedback perceptions, hindering students’ active participation in feedback processes.

This study addresses a gap in the literature on master’s students’ perceptions of evaluative language in supervisory feedback and provides practical recommendations for both thesis supervisors and master’s students to facilitate the acceptance and application of feedback.

In this paper we explore the gendered ways in which academic staff resistance and compliance is configured in a post-1992 University in England, including the emotions implicated in the navigation of neo-liberalisation and research intensification of their academic institution and its associated disciplinarian mechanisms.

We draw on data from an interview study of a diverse sample of 32 academics of different gender, discipline and academic grade. Analysis informed by a feminist post-structuralist framework of power and discourse explored different forms of academic resistance and compliance; how the embodied academic subject was (re)negotiated within gendered discourses of neo-liberal research excellence and managerialism and the gendered emotions generated in processes of resistance and compliance.

Institutional change and expectations to engage with research performativity generated fear, anxiety and anger. Female staff appeared to actively resist the masculinized research subject performing all hours work and individualism in the context of private and institutional gendered relations and labour. Male staff though actively resisted the feminization of higher education and the neo-liberal instrumentalization of caring and therapeutic cultures and ideologically resisted the surveillance mechanisms of higher education including the REF.

Our work contributes to scholarship problematizing the assumed neutrality of resistance and compliance and highlighting women’s symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. In terms of theorising academic resistance to neo-liberalism and identity construction, further attention should be given to the mobilization and symbolic capital of academics and emotions positioned differently due to their gender and intersecting differences.

Our study addresses a gap in the scholarship of academic resistance and compliance by advancing the understanding of gender inequalities and emotions implicated in the process of resistance and compliance against neo-liberalism.

This paper investigated the intrinsic and extrinsic sources of academic well-being among university teachers at one university in Qatar, to understand how different factors influence their well-being within academia.

Drawing on systems theory, this study employs Q methodology research. Data were collected and analyzed using 35 statements (Q-items) related to academic well-being. Twenty-one university teachers participated in the study, providing a range of perspectives on the factors that influenced their academic well-being.

The analysis revealed two distinct perspectives among the participants concerning the sources of academic well-being. Factor 1 (F-1) emphasized workplace conditions as the primary source of well-being, whereas Factor 2 (F-2) highlighted individual conditions. Additionally, a significant portion of participants did not align strongly with either factor, indicating diverse and individualized sources of well-being that suggest a complex interplay of various elements affecting academic well-being.

The study’s sample size is limited to twenty-one university teachers at a single institution, which may affect the generalizability of the findings. Future research should consider a larger, more diverse sample to explore the universality of the findings across different academic contexts.

The implications for university teachers, researchers, leaders and policymakers include a better understanding of the sources that contribute to academic well-being and the need for adopting systems thinking in addressing these sources.

This study employs a unique application of Q methodology within a systems theory framework to explore the sources of academic well-being among university teachers. Unlike previous research that has primarily focused on anxiety, stress and burnout, this study provides a holistic perspective by capturing the complex interplay between organizational structures and individual identities.

Researchers from different disciplines have advocated for the incorporation of Systems Thinking in higher education in various fields such as environmental studies, engineering, economics and management. Nevertheless, educational experiences that seek to integrate the systems approach and citizenship education are not numerous and have not been sufficiently documented. This research paper presents classroom research aimed at understanding how Systems Thinking and citizenship education are articulated within a general education course.

The research was designed using Grounded Theory within an exploratory-descriptive approach. To collect data, the following techniques were used: participant observation, focus group and documentary analysis. The data analysis was carried out through the constant comparative method in its open, axial, selective and theoretical contrast coding phases.

The data analysis highlights the potential of Systems Thinking within the context of Citizenship Education as a comprehensive set of cognitive, affective and methodological tools. Moreover, it sheds light on the pedagogical practices, the teaching strategies and the type of socioemotional interactions in the classroom that are key elements in promoting citizenship attitudes, ideas and behaviors.

The research underscores the importance of a systemic vision of education that explicitly incorporates social-emotional learning and experiences of citizen participation beyond the classroom where students can build new knowledge from first-hand interactions with processes of social transformation.

This study aims to address a systematic literature review (SLR) using bibliometrics on the relationship between academic integrity and artificial intelligence (AI), to bridge the scattering of literature on this topic, given the challenge and opportunity for the educational and academic community.

This review highlights the enormous social influence of COVID-19 by mapping the extensive yet distinct and fragmented literature in AI and academic integrity fields. Based on 163 publications from the Web of Science, this paper offers a framework summarising the balance between AI and academic integrity.

With the rapid advancement of technology, AI tools have exponentially developed that threaten to destroy students' academic integrity in higher education. Despite this significant interest, there is a dearth of academic literature on how AI can help in academic integrity. Therefore, this paper distinguishes two significant thematical patterns: academic integrity and negative predictors of academic integrity.

This study also presents several contributions by showing that tools associated with AI can act as detectors of students who plagiarise. That is, they can be useful in identifying students with fraudulent behaviour. Therefore, it will require a combined effort of public, private academic and educational institutions and the society with affordable policies.

This study proposes a new, innovative framework summarising the balance between AI and academic integrity.