Policy Press

Education and learning

Only a third of children in the world’s poorest households currently complete school. Two thirds of all illiterate adults are women and nearly half the global illiterate population lives in Southern Asia.

In focusing on education policy and the inequalities that are both in-built in education systems and perpetuated by them, our publishing responds to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education. Revealing and addressing some of the challenges in education, including those around technology and the digital divide, it looks to internationally-sourced evidence-based solutions, challenging traditional neoliberal approaches to learning.

Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Education and learning, we aim to address the following goal:

SDG Publishers compact logoSDG 4: Quality education

Showing 37-48 of 183 items.

The Liberal Arts Paradox in Higher Education

Negotiating Inclusion and Prestige

By examining the emergence and growth of liberal arts degrees in English higher education, this book tackles one of the key issues in the critical sociology of higher education: the relationship between selective education and elitism.

Policy Press

Children, Family and the State

A Critical Introduction

This book gives students a critical insight into how children and families' everyday lives and experiences are shaped by policy and legislation. Providing guidance on developing academic assignments throughout, it covers concepts such as the family within multicultural societies, poverty, social mobility and life-chances.

Policy Press

The Immobility Turn

Mobility, Migration and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Using empirical evidence from Portugal, a geopolitically important point of intersection within Europe and between Global South and Global North, this book offers invaluable insights about how the pandemic has impacted migration, mobility, industries and individuals’ lives, informing policy-making processes on a global level.

Bristol Uni Press

Schooling in a Democracy

Returning Education to the Public Service

COVID-19 has widened inequalities in schools and left the future uncertain. Richard Riddell argues that the increasingly narrow focus of education governance has made new thinking impossible and has degraded public life. Nevertheless, he highlights new possibilities for democratic behaviour and the opening up of schooling to all it serves.

Policy Press

Affective Capitalism in Academia

Revealing Public Secrets

Drawing on affect theory and research on academic capitalism and 11 international case studies, this book examines the contemporary crisis of universities, from the coloniality of academic capitalism to performance management and the experience of being performance-managed.

Policy Press

A Political Sociology of Education Policy

This book aims to restore the role of political analysis in education policy by presenting a new political sociology for framing, conducting and presenting research. In doing so, it will be the first in the field to connect political thinking from Arendt with sociological thinking from Bourdieu.

Policy Press

Transitioning Vocational Education and Training in Africa

A Social Skills Ecosystem Perspective

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book takes an expansive view of vocational education and training. Drawing on case studies across rural and urban Uganda and South Africa, the book offers a new way of seeing this through an exploration of the multiple ways in which people learn to have better livelihoods.

Bristol Uni Press

The Pursuit of Possibility

Redesigning Research Universities

Nigel Thrift explores recent changes in the British research university that threaten to erode the quality of these higher education institutions. He considers what a research university has now become by examining the quandaries that have arisen from a succession of misplaced strategies and false expectations.

Policy Press

Bridging Neoliberalism and Hindu Nationalism

The Role of Education in Bringing about Contemporary India

Hindu Nationalism is not well understood outside of India, and its links to the global neoliberal trajectory have not been much explored. This important book shows why it is education, not a failed political system, that led to the rise of Modi and the right-wing nationalist ideology of Hindutva.

Bristol Uni Press

Educational Transitions and Social Justice

Understanding Upper Secondary School Choices in Urban Contexts

Edited by Aina Tarabini

Drawing on qualitative analysis in Barcelona and Madrid, this book explores upper secondary educational transitions in urban contexts, the different political, institutional and subjective dimensions of these transitions and the multiple mechanisms of inequality that traverse them.

Policy Press

Modern Work and the Marketisation of Higher Education

Higher Education sectors across the world have experienced a gradual process of marketisation. This book offers a new interpretation on why and how marketisation has taken place within England and questions the rationale for further marketisation of Higher Education.

Policy Press

Protecting and Safeguarding Children in Schools

A Multi-Agency Approach

Schools play a vital role in safeguarding children and young people, and this timely book examines how schools identify and respond to child protection concerns, and their engagement with local authority children’s services.

Policy Press