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This chapter discusses the issue of those young people who upon leaving compulsory education at age 16 in England do not progress into further education, training or employment and are known as NEETs. It elucidates possible causes of NEETs and the characteristics of those classed as NEET. A particular intervention programme, Learning Independence for Future Transition (LIFT), is described as developed and implemented in a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) and some evaluative comments offered.

This chapter discusses what the working practices and professionalism of sports lecturers can tell us about the challenges of professionalism in further education (FE). This chapter draws on Jake's doctoral research in which he interviewed five sports lecturers working in FE colleges in England, about their identities and practices. In this chapter, Jake talks about his own experiences as a sports lecturer in FE and how his increasing disillusionment with his role led him to undertake doctoral research in this field. We explore constructions of professionalism within FE, and we show that through a process Jake identified and labelled as ‘competitive mediation’, the sports lecturers he interviewed used their experiences as elite sports people to navigate the highly performative environments in which they were working. The positives and negatives of using this strategy for them, their learners and wider society are explored in this chapter. We suggest that although Jake's research focused specifically on sports lecturers in FE settings, his insights can be applied more widely, we reflect on the importance of considering the impact our own diverse lived experiences may have on our sense of professionalism as researchers and practitioners.

This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the English, Northern Irish, Arab Israeli, Trinidad and Tobago and the US cases. The focus is what we have learned from the research about: the relationships within Education Governance Systems to navigate turbulence; building capacity for empowering senior-level leaders to deliver on their manifestos and outstanding track records for school improvement; reducing the achievement gap between dominant groups and marginalised groups in International Governance Systems. The chapter identifies that all cases require participatory multi-stakeholder action to develop and support collaborative networked learning communities in practice. Such communities of and for practice need to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal (EYSIER). Policy and Education Governance Systems have the potential to synthesise the best of what has been said and done in the past, with innovative ways of working by empowering networks of knowledge building and advocacy. These networks co-create opportunities for action learners to work together to describe intersectionalities of discrimination and begin to remove fear of discrimination and marginalisation from Education Governance Systems. From this position, senior-level leaders can work with their leaders, teachers, parents and students to optimise how learning about the self, and learning how to learn improves community education for all students and EYSIER.

This exploratory study discusses the policy learning process of the development of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy.

The paper discusses how DRR has and has not developed in Thailand through the two major disasters: the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2011 Great Flood. The information was collected by documentary analysis to gain a historical and critical understanding of the development of the system and policy of DRR in Thailand. Additionally, key stakeholders' interviews were undertaken to supplement the analysis.

The paper demonstrates that Thailand's DRR development has been “reactive” rather than “proactive”, being largely directed by global DRR actors.

Being a small-scale study, the sample size was small. The analysis and argument would be consolidated with an increase in the number of interviews.

The model can help deconstruct which dimension of the learning process a government has/has not achieved well.

The application of the “restrictive-expansive policy learning” model, which identifies different dimensions of policy learning, reveals that the Thai government's policy learning was of a mixed nature.

Analyses the present condition of, and future possibilities for, the professionalization of those who work in vocational education and training in the UK. Argues that for the UK, as for other European countries, a high quality system of vocational education and training (VET) is a precondition for both a competitive economy and democratic society. Begins with a description of the current state and status of VET in the UK, and charts the legacy of 18 years of neo‐liberal conservative government and its implications for the position of VET professionals. Identifies the new demands being made on VET professionals by changes in the global economy and develops a model of the VET professional as a connective specialist for responding to these demands. Explores two aspects of the model ‐ pedagogy and the role of new technologies (telematics in particular) ‐ in some detail. Finally, considers some of the political and economic policies needed for such a model to be implemented.

This chapter shows, from a comprehensive and dynamic approach, a unitary idea of Europe that shatters the fragmentation and reification of the old continent that is being politically projected. The research, based on a brief overview of the geopolitical and territorial diversity of the Western European countries, recovers the cartographic representation of Europe made by Sebastian Münster in 1544. It aims to represent a renewed area that has strengthened its international presence, based on the legitimization of divergent trajectories explained through interactive logics.

The political agenda for socio-educational issues portrays the contextual diversity that rules the governance of the Western European education systems. At the same time, it shows unification regarding inclusive institutional paradigms where the most significant achievements are accomplished within the European strategic framework. The research allows us to move on from the nationalist–post-nationalist option. Part of the European scene from which present and future lines of joint action are extracted in relation to sustainability, economic digitization and/or reformulation of the social system model.

This paper focuses on the strategic role of elites in managing institutional and organizational change within English public services, framed by the wider ideological and political context of neo-liberalism and its pervasive impact on the social and economic order over recent decades. It also highlights the unintended consequences of this elite-driven programme of institutional reform as realized in the emergence of hybridized regimes of ‘polyarchic governance’ and the innovative discursive and organizational technologies on which they depend. Within the latter, ‘leaderism’ is identified as a hegemonic ‘discursive imaginary’ that has the potential to connect selected marketization and market control elements of new public management (NPM), network governance, and visionary and shared leadership practices that ‘make the hybrid happen’ in public services reform.