Policy Logic Research Articles

Laying Foundations for Islamic Teacher Education

Increasingly, educators committed to the vision of Islamic schooling are expressing sentiments of moral dissonance. On the one hand, they choose Islamic schools because they aspire to affect hearts, nurture whole human beings, and grow spiritually while impacting their learners’ sense of higher purpose. On the other hand, they are up against an era of globalised educational reform, characterised by neoliberal-engendered market forces and neoliberal policy logic that promote performativity and efficiency. This narrows what counts as learning, technicises the art of teaching, and assumes all learning that counts is visible and measurable. The teacher education and ongoing professional learning that educators working in Islamic schools have access to remains bifurcated. It is unable to address how an educator committed to tarbiya as “soul-making” ought to navigate aspirations with realities. This paper serves as the introduction to a special issue (SI) dedicated to conceptualising why Islamically grounded teacher education is needed and what it may entail. This SI will also offer empirical studies related to existing Islamic teacher education and professional learning programmes that capture essential reflections for a burgeoning subfield of Islamic Education Studies. In this introduction specifically, the co-editors and a co-author colleague make three big moves to lay the foundations for Islamic teacher education, including (1) establishing urgency for why Islamic teacher education is needed, (2) conceptualising what makes teacher education “Islamic”, and (3) providing an example of one Islamic teacher education programme’s attempt to advance a coherent professional learning journey for Islamic school educators. Together, these three moves serve as an attempt to redress bifurcation and advance a contextually relevant in-road to teacher education that is rooted in an Islamic paradigm and worldview while conversant with contemporary debates in education.

‘Solving’ the curriculum resource ‘problem’? A critical policy analysis

ABSTRACT With the proliferation of the online curriculum resource marketplace, policy actors are increasingly looking to invest in curated hubs of ready-made resources. Policy discourses indicate this phenomenon is heralded worldwide as a panacea for improving teacher workload issues and student achievement. Focusing on Australia, this article examines how federal government recommendations for the provision of ‘evidence-based’ and ‘quality assured’ curriculum resources are likely to influence national directions for schooling. Engaging Bacchi’s [(2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Pearson] What’s the problem represented to be? (WPR) framework, we scrutinise how curriculum resource provision is problematised in a key national policy document. This analysis brings to the fore the technocratic policy logics and highlights how these logics are implicit in the privileging of external knowledge actors as authorities in resource provision. This poses questions nationally and internationally about the streamlining of teachers’ curricular practices as a ‘solution’ to complex systemic issues.

Structural Disadvantage in Housing Opportunities

This paper discusses the ways that race and migration have shaped the housing opportunities people experience in England. It explores the historical development of policy and practice that has shaped racial inequalities in housing. It argues that the violence created by national and local state-supported housing policies has disproportionately affected racialised minorities, as has the slow violence generated by the neglect and stigmatisation of working-class housing. In turn, this has provided the justification for clearances and the remaking of space for those with the money to invest in the financialisation of land and housing through dispossession and denial of the right to safe, secure, and affordable housing. This analysis will be used as a basis to propose ways in which housing research can develop a coherent, critical perspective to race and migration and develop an alternative discourse to challenge the dominant market-driven, individualistic narratives. Adopting a critical approach allows researchers to move beyond the logic of housing policies at national and local levels to analyse and propose action to address persistent racial inequalities in housing.

The Carceral Logic of Female Eligibility Policies: Gender as a Civilizing Narrative, the Science of Sex Testing, and Anti-Trans Legislation1

Female eligibility policies punish people for gender nonconformity and normalize patriarchal rule. These policies were used first to exclude women deemed “too masculine” from competing against women who more closely conform to gender stereotypes. In recent years, this form of discipline has dovetailed with efforts to determine the circumstances, if any, under which transgender women may compete against cisgender women. Modern sport, as a set of institutions, does not stand apart from capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy. In this article, I use a prison abolitionist lens to connect anti-trans campaigns and female eligibility policies that police sporting identity to the carceral logics of racial capitalism to make the argument that sex surveillance is related to race, social control, and capital accumulation.

When socialization fails: breaking the habit of engagement with China

Abstract Why do states sustain failing policy? The literature on path dependency and cognitive habits shows how foreign policy logics become axiomatic. Yet these explanations focus too much on people and not enough on policies. We argue that the content of policies matters for the degree and depth of their entrenchment. Policies with long-term time horizons, immeasurable objectives and diffuse effects are especially vulnerable to stasis. Engagement policies toward China are a paradigmatic example. We focus on Canada's engagement policy, which exhibits both stasis and change, and refer to similar policies of other countries. Drawing on primary evidence including interviews with high-level diplomats and decision-makers, we find that engagement aimed at socializing China was sustained despite growing evidence of its failure—including through a multi-year diplomatic crisis. Change only became possible through ‘institutionalized debate’, meaning the purposeful creation of formal channels for debate. The article makes three contributions. First, we identify a novel explanation of stasis, showing that the content of policies matters. Second, we introduce a practical pathway—institutionalized debate—that can disrupt stasis once a policy logic is habituated. Finally, we identify an aspect of socialization ignored in the literature: when operationalized as policy, it becomes resistant to reversal.

How is Educational Equity Possible: The Evolutionary Logic of Compulsory Education Enrollment Policies from the Perspective of Historical Institutionalism

The enrollment policy for compulsory education concerns the right of school-age children and adolescents to receive equal education, as well as the realization of educational equity. Based on the analytical framework of historical institutionalism, this paper examines the evolutionary logic of the enrollment policy for compulsory education. Since the founding of New China, China's enrollment policy for compulsory education has undergone four periods: efficiency priority, balancing efficiency and fairness, emphasizing fairness, and implementing fairness, reflecting a shift in policy value orientation from efficiency to fairness. Economic system reform, uneven regional development, and the concept of educational equity are the underlying structural factors influencing policy changes. Rational choices made by actors such as the government, schools, and parents have led to path dependence in policy changes. Reform and opening up, initial education reform, and comprehensive reform in the field of education have become three critical junctures in promoting policy changes. We should always adhere to educational equity as the policy value goal, seek to break through path dependence at critical junctures, and focus on the coordination of multiple subjects in the gradual development of policies, in order to better achieve educational equity.

The Historical Changes and Evolutionary Logic of China's Fertility Policy

The Historical Changes and Evolutionary Logic of China's Fertility Policy

Cold Moves: Cryogenics in Indo-German Research Networks.

By unravelling the complexities and dynamics of a collaboration between scientists in India and West Germany to establish a cryogenic network, this paper intends to contribute to our understanding of the transnational movement of research technologies during the Cold War. In 1971, a cryogenic laboratory including a helium and a nitrogen liquefier was set up at the physics department of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras as part of the Indo-German partnership at IIT Madras between 1959 and 1974. As a generic research technology with many applications, cryogenics became crucial for a solid state research agenda for semiconductor development. After initial difficulties, Ramaswami Srinivasan at IIT Madras and Gustav Klipping of the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin built a successful collaboration based on mutual trust and on Indian and German scientists travelling and working in each other's laboratories. If the initial motivation of the Indo-German partnership was informed by the logic of Cold War development policy, Klipping and Srinivasan developed their collaboration into a vibrant cryogenic research network around different actors, instruments, and skills moving between India and the Federal Republic of Germany.

A meta-ethnography of the factors that shape link workers’ experiences of social prescribing

BackgroundSocial prescribing is gaining traction internationally. It is an approach which seeks to address non-medical and health-related social needs through taking a holistic person-centred and community-based approach. This involves connecting people with and supporting them to access groups and organisations within their local communities. It is hoped that social prescribing might improve health inequities and reduce reliance on healthcare services. In the UK, social prescribing link workers have become core parts of primary care teams. Despite growing literature on the implementation of social prescribing, to date there has been no synthesis that develops a theoretical understanding of the factors that shape link workers’ experiences of their role.MethodsWe undertook a meta-ethnographic evidence synthesis of qualitative literature to develop a novel conceptual framework that explains how link workers experience their roles. We identified studies using a systematic search of key databases, Google alerts, and through scanning reference lists of included studies. We followed the eMERGe guidance when conducting and reporting this meta-ethnography.ResultsOur synthesis included 21 studies and developed a “line of argument” or overarching conceptual framework which highlighted inherent and interacting tensions present at each of the levels that social prescribing operates. These tensions may arise from a mismatch between the policy logic of social prescribing and the material and structural reality, shaped by social, political, and economic forces, into which it is being implemented.ConclusionsThe tensions highlighted in our review shape link workers’ experiences of their role. They may call into question the sustainability of social prescribing and the link worker role as currently implemented, as well as their ability to deliver desired outcomes such as reducing health inequities or healthcare service utilisation. Greater consideration should be given to how the link worker role is defined, deployed, and trained. Furthermore, thought should be given to ensuring that the infrastructure into which social prescribing is being implemented is sufficient to meet needs. Should social prescribing seek to improve outcomes for those experiencing social and economic disadvantage, it may be necessary for social prescribing models to allow for more intensive and longer-term modes of support.

The Impact of Policy Uncertainty on the US Treasury Bond Market

In 2020, with the rapid spread of the epidemic worldwide, the financial markets of the United States and other countries experienced a huge impact rarely seen in history. This paper focuses on analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on the US economic situation and the bond market. It explores the potential logic of some US government policies to deal with the impact of COVID-19 on the bond market. In addition, this paper also compares and analyzes policies with real-time data to judge the effectiveness of various policies. Currently, the US government actively implements monetary and fiscal policies and prudently responds to the negative effects of these policies. The large-scale purchase of government bonds and the corresponding quantitative easing policy are gradually started among them. These changes effectively controlled the indicators of the US bond market. At the same time, some other policies are carefully managing risks, such as a spike in inflation. Finally, the United States successfully reduced the economic losses caused by the epidemic and survived the crisis.

The logic of the Marcos Jr. Government’s South China Sea Policy

This study provides a comprehensive discussion of changes in the Philippines’ South China Sea strategy under the Marcos Jr. government. Since his election in June 2022, the Philippines has implemented a diversified strategy regarding its South China Sea policy and related disputes with China. In striving for its interests and activities in the South China Sea, the Philippines aims to launch hard and soft checks and balances on China at multiple levels, for example, through multilateral military cooperation with the United States, international arbitration, and applying propaganda tactics. This study attempts to deconstruct the specific actions and overall logic of the Philippines' South China Sea policy by comprehensively analyzing international dynamics and domestic changes. It sheds light on the intricate way global geopolitical contests, particularly the intensifying rivalry between China and the United States, are influencing political sentiment and actions within the Philippines. Concurrently, it examines the Philippines' strategic deployment of its South China Sea policy to catalyze international reactions, such as support from the United States, and how this involves recalibrating its internal political and economic landscape. Overall, the paper shows how the Philippines’ South China Sea policy seeks an optimal balance among various forces while facing many uncertainties and challenges.

The Politics of Injury: Debilitation and the Right to Maim at the EU Border

ABSTRACT Borders are sites of mass injury. This article questions the necro-consensus that has emerged within migration studies, and explores the political role that less-than-deadly violence plays at contemporary borders. By withholding from outright killing, and thus avoiding the optics of public scrutiny, EU states are deploying a carefully calibrated politics of injury designed to control racialised groups through debilitation. The injuries produced through this border regime—typified by illegal ‘pushbacks’ and deplorable camp conditions—exist beneath a threshold of liberal acceptability. In short, EU states routinely deny the right to asylum by imposing the ‘right to maim’ (Puar 2017). This article draws upon long-term research along the ‘Balkan Route’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, including interviews with medics, activists, EU officials, and people on the move, as well as analysis of a large border violence database. We argue that mass injury has become a politically tolerated form of violence that perversely provides the EU with the illusory conceit of humanitarian “care”. In dialogue with postcolonial scholarship that has questioned the centrality of death within biopolitics, we assert the importance of interrogating not only the necropolitical logics of migration policy (i.e death), but also the politics of non-lethal violence: the strategic and attenuated delivery of injury, maiming, and incapacitation that shapes contemporary borders. Contributing to geographies of violence and critical border studies, we suggest that greater attention is needed towards less-than-deadly harms that underpin contemporary political geographies.

The UK's ‘Safe and Legal’ Humanitarian Routes: from Colonial Ties to Privatising Protection

AbstractIn this article, the UK's ‘safe and legal (humanitarian) routes’ are evaluated by examining how they are positioned in the post‐Brexit migration regime, and how these domestic provisions compare to those underwritten by international protections. The Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas)—HK BN(O)s—and Ukraine visa schemes are an area of focus which, combined, account for the vast majority of those arriving in the UK for the purposes of humanitarian protections since Brexit. Despite being formally presented under the same banner, the schemes have significant differences in terms of eligibility criteria, costs, rights and entitlements. Moreover, on closer inspection, while they share an overarching policy vision informed by foreign policy priorities, these new provisions are underpinned by different genealogies and policy logics. While the HK BN(O) scheme is rooted in the tradition of ancestry visas and colonial entanglements and requires that potential beneficiaries pay for protections, the Ukrainian schemes are more closely aligned with recent refugee resettlement schemes and share with them the push towards greater involvement of private and community stakeholders in humanitarian protection.

Reclaiming the Border Narrative: Refugee Children as Victim, Witness, and Agent in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive

Valeria Luiselli’s 2019 novel Lost Children Archive records and reimagines visa-less migrant children’s encounters with hostile borders, while also challenging the logic and legality of border policy, a set of neocolonial practices that allows former colonial powers to continue their control over the mobility of bodies and epistemologies from the Global South. In an interview with The New Yorker about her novel, Luiselli commented on the role of narrative in conceptualizing and achieving justice when the law fails to deliver or denies justice: “Perhaps the only way to grant any justice—were that even possible—is by hearing and recording those stories over and over again so that they come back, always, to haunt and shame us.” 1 Luiselli thus highlights not only the power of storytelling in delivering justice otherwise denied, but also its ability to generate a moral, emotional, and intellectual response in its audience. This paper analyzes how Luiselli employs “factional” 2 narrative to “haunt and shame us,” question existing border policies, and grant authorial and narrative justice in the absence of institutional or legal justice through the extended metaphor of children on the move. I introduce the concept of “tripartite subjectivity” in analyzing how Luiselli’s factional children are, on the one hand, victims of and witnesses to the violence perpetrated by border laws, and, on the other hand, agents who challenge and reinterpret hostile borders, transforming the static border into a site of epistemic rupture. The tripartite subjectivity of Luiselli’s lost children provide a model via which characters who have been deprived of what Thomas Nail calls “socially determined status” (and thereby are rejected border access due to their inability to contribute to the state’s kinopolitical expansion) reclaim both fictional and epistemological borders through a reverse kinopolitics of what I term “bordered expansion by archive.”

An Analytical Study on the Logic of Tourism Consumption Policies under the Perspective of Multi-Stream Theory in the Post-Epidemic Era---Taking Harbin City as an Example

In recent years, the tourism industry was one of the first sectors to be seriously affected by the New Crown epidemic. Therefore, in the post-epidemic era, China has introduced a series of policies to promote tourism consumption. Based on a multiple streams perspective, this paper explores the internal logic behind the formulation of tourism consumption policies by taking Harbin City as an example, which involves issues, policies, and political perspectives. The study finds that there are problems, policies, and politics behind the formulation of a policy and the setting of an agenda at the social level. Problem streams such as the single structure of tourism consumption and poor service quality are the main sources of policy change; the research results of experts and scholars are the policy stream of policy change; and social opinion and the direction of national sentiment are the political stream of policy change. The three streams converge at a certain point in time and open the window of policy. To further promote the development and improvement of the tourism consumption market, Harbin City should establish a sense of the problem and adhere to the problem orientation in the future; widely solicit suggestions and adhere to the policy formulation from multiple angles; and uphold the concept of service and create a good public opinion environment.

Between Freedom and Order: Evolution logic of urban-rural population mobility Policy from the perspective of historical institutionalism

Urban-rural population flow is the key element and important driving force for urban-rural integration development and rural revitalization. The pattern of urban-rural population flow in China is restricted and guided by policies. From the perspective of historical institutionalism, this paper analyzes the evolution context, structural logic and dynamic mechanism of the change of urban and rural population mobility policy. The urban and rural population mobility policy has gone through five historical stages: the order reconstruction period at the beginning of the founding of New China, the political call period after the Great Leap Forward Movement, the free flow period after the reform and opening up, the period of making the best use of the situation under the economic system reform and the accelerated integration period under the background of the new era. The institutional choice under different paths, the institutional evolution under the key nodes and the institutional continuation under the path dependence constitute the structural logic of the policy change of urban-rural population mobility. The situation coupling under the action of exogenous variables, the value coupling promoted by the change of ideas, and the subject coupling under the interaction of actors’ game constitute the dynamic mechanism of policy change, which promotes the historical change and realistic development of policy.

시스템 사고를 활용한 저출산과 교육의 인과 현상 분석

Considering that the low fertility phenomenon is intricately intertwined with education, this study attempted to analyze the causal phenomenon of low fertility and education through the lens of systems thinking. First, the relationship between low fertility and education and the logic of the education policy in response to low fertility were analyzed with a causal loop diagram, and then the problem of the education policy in response to low fertility was analyzed by synthesizing them.
 The analysis revealed that the low fertility is reinforced by establishing mutual causal relationships with education-related variables such as the burden of private education costs, increased demand for higher education, and the deterioration of the quality of the educational environment. The education policies in response to low fertility that emerged in this context were passive policies, focusing on adapting to a low fertility society(e.g., university structural reform, reduction of the number of teachers, consolidation of schools, and complexation of school facilities), and active policies, aimed at raising fertility rates(e.g., expanding care supply and supporting education expenses). However, it was found that the intervention effect of the education policy in response to low fertility was limited due to problems such as lack of consideration of key factors of low fertility, such as the burden of private education expenses, or unintended negative results such as a decrease in the quality of the educational environment were found in the policy execution process. Based on these research results, the matters to be considered in the design and implementation of low fertility education policies were presented as implications.

Neoliberal humanitarianism: Contradictory policy logics and Syrian refugee experiences in Japan

Abstract Since the 2011 beginning of the Syrian uprising, more than 800 Syrians have become registered residents of Japan. Japan is an unusual destination for these refugees due not only to its geographical and cultural distance from the Middle East and lack of Arab diasporic communities, but also to what we call neoliberal humanitarianism: an approach by which states adopt policies and programmes to reduce refugees’ suffering while also regarding refugees as potentially profitable workers responsible for their own economic survival and social integration. In Japan’s case, the driver of neoliberal humanitarianism is its interest in keeping par with G7 peers in ‘doing something’ in the face of a global ‘refugee crisis’ on the one hand, and its lack of political or social will to receive refugees, on the other. The contradictions inherent in these imperatives come to the fore in the ‘Japanese Initiative for the future of Syrian Refugees’ (JISR), which invites Syrian refugees to pursue graduate degrees at Japanese universities. Japan officially presents JISR participants as refugees, but legally regards them as students, provides limited financial support, and encourages them not to apply for asylum. This article investigates JISR as a case study of neoliberal humanitarianism and examines its contradictory logics and consequences, from the perspective of refugees’ experiences. Qualitative analysis of twenty-one original interviews shows that, though Syrians often choose Japan in search of stability after years of precarity in countries on Syria’s borders, neoliberal humanitarianism in this unusual destination generates a new chapter of uncertainty and disappointment.

The Conflation of Dual Language Bilingual Education With Gifted Programs in New York City Schools

As neighborhoods across New York City gentrify, Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) has become a big draw for gentrifier families. Our research contributes to growing literature on DLBE gentrification by examining how a racially diverse group of parents in two communities perceived DLBE as a school choice option. We found that schools with DLBE programs screened potential students via academic screening tests or school choice processes to determine admission into DLBE programs. This screening process has contributed to a) the conflation of DLBE with the city’s gifted programs, and b) a focus away from admitting and centering emergent bilinguals. While this screening served to further advantage gentrifier families, some parents resisted the opportunity hoarding behaviors of their peers through their alternative school choices and advocacy efforts. In this way, we show how all parents are constrained and impacted by the neoliberal logics of contemporary DLBE policy and school choice.

Health poverty alleviation in China from the perspective of historical institutionalism: policy changes and driving factors.

Health poverty alleviation is an effective tool for improving the living quality and developmental conditions of impoverished populations. Since 1978, China has been actively implementing health poverty alleviation projects, resulting in a more robust rural healthcare service network and increased convenience for the local population to access medical treatment. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that China still faces a complex situation with the simultaneous existence of multiple disease threats and the interweaving of various health influencing factors. Ongoing risks of emerging infectious diseases persist, and some previously controlled or eliminated infectious diseases are at risk of resurgence. The incidence of chronic diseases is on the rise and exhibits a trend toward affecting younger populations. Therefore, examining the successful experiences of China's health poverty alleviation over the past 40 years becomes a critically important issue. The study focuses on China's health poverty alleviation policies, employing historical institutionalism as a theoretical perspective to analyze the historical changes and evolutionary logic of health poverty alleviation policies. A historical institutionalist analytical framework for health poverty alleviation policies is constructed. The research findings reveal that China's health poverty alleviation policy has undergone three distinct periods since 1978: the initial phase (1978-2000), the exploratory phase (2000-2012), and the stable development phase (2013-present). At the macro level, the political, economic, and social contexts of different periods have influenced the evolution of health poverty alleviation policies. On the meso level, coordination effects and adaptive expectations have had an impact on China's health poverty alleviation policy. At the micro level, various actors, including the central government, local governments at different levels, social forces, and impoverished communities, interact during the evolution of health poverty alleviation policies. This paper summarizes the theoretical aspects of China's health poverty alleviation policy experience. The research conclusions, viewed through the lens of historical institutionalism, offer practical insights into the evolution of government policies. This provides directional guidance for enhancing health poverty alleviation projects.