Science AI Journal
Social Sciences · Research topic

Open research questions in Global Educational Policies and Reforms

265 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 21,779 Global Educational Policies and Reforms papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • The study argues that policy revisions like the DepEd MATATAG Agenda are insufficient without effective, collaborative educational leadership and holistic investments addressing socio-economic inequities, ultimately advocating for reform centered on equity, accountability, and system capacity.

    Beyond Reading Deficits · 2026 · DOI

  • Rather than a prescriptive framework on EIPM, I contributed a conceptual heuristic device as a core reference to inform the intellectual agenda on an under-researched policy approach in the field.

    Conceptualising evidence-informed policymaking in European adult learning and education—Moving the intellectual agenda forward · 2026 · DOI

  • Finally, future research should examine how a post-meritocratic educational ethics can be translated into concrete principles for education policy and school practice. As Demirer (2020) notes, the weak egalitarianism form of distributive models that focus solely on equalizing the distribution of resources is insufficient to explain experiences of humiliation and exclusion produced by meritocracy in education, insofar as it overlooks status hierarchies and the symbolic dimension of social inequality.

    The Myth of Meritocracy in Education: A Philosophical Inquiry into Desert, Success, and Moral Legitimation · 2026 · DOI

  • This research notes that, today, Platonic education can still serve educational thought; however, one must exercise restraint and critical scrutiny for this kind of education to work. That is why the suggestions are to pursue selective adaptation rather than imitation itself. In modern systems, Plato did not find hierarchy essential; however, his solemn attitude toward the goal of education might be helpful. At the very least, the policymakers must redress the balance between the aims of education, which include moral, civic, and intellectual formation, and skills, testing, and employability. Platonic education helps remind us that schools' performance should not be measured in the short term. Ethics, citizenship, dialogue, literature, history, the arts, and intellectual reflection should then be emphasized more in the curriculum policy. All these areas make students think about being more than just effective workers. Second, the teachers and school leaders ought to enhance dialogic and reflective pedagogy. The most appropriate kind of Platonic education for the classroom is one that encourages questioning, reasoning, and discussion. However, this is supposed to occur democratically, giving students a chance to speak out, challenge, and contribute effectively. As such, schools should also integrate robust teacher guidance alongside respectful student agency. Third, future scholars ought to continue evaluating classical thinking in education in comparison with current policy and practice. There is more to be done regarding their relation to Platonic ideas and their application to peace education, character education, teaching in the digital age, and inclusive civic education. The juxtaposition of Platonic ideas with those of other thinkers, such as Dewey, would also be a sure way to determine when they are useful and when they are restrictive.

    Evaluating Platonic Education and Its Relevance to the Modern-Day Education System · 2026 · DOI

  • Initiatives from other sectors could be examined for inspiration. The creation of these privacy-preserving synthetic datasets should not be limited to administrative data but also encompass learning data that are typically collected by private companies, at least partly through public contracts. Brazil has for example successfully used it in some areas of the country where devices and connectivity are scarcely available.

    Reimagining Teaching in an Accelerating World · 2026 · DOI

  • For more comprehensive findings, future studies should consider expanding their geographical scope, incor- porating quantitative surveys, and including a broader range of institutional actors. Despite the significant contribution, the researchers recog- nize that there are limitations: the focus on narratives is a strength; however, the research is limited to a single region (Karaganda), affecting transferability to other contexts within the country.

    “We have stolen our kids’ childhood”: parents’ and teachers’ perspectives on shadow education in Kazakhstan · 2026 · DOI

  • Information Age Publishing. (pp. 195–228). RADICALTEACHER http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu No. 133 (Spring 2026) DOI 10.5195/rt.2026.1276 72 Kluegel, J., & Smith, E. (1986). Beliefs about inequality: Americans’ views of what is and what ought to be. Routledge. Koltz, J., & Kersten-Parrish, S. (2020). Using children’s picturebooks to facilitate restorative justice discussion. The Reading Teacher, 73(5), 637–645. Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Race, class, and family life (2nd ed.). University of California Press. https://www.ucpress.edu/ebook.php?isbn=97805209 49904 Lesko, N. (2001). Act your age! A cultural construction of adolescence. Routledge. Li, V., Spitzer, B., & Olson, K. R. (2014). Preschoolers reduce inequality while favoring individuals with more.

    Undoing Neoclassical Economics in Elementary School: Three New York City Classrooms and the Teaching of Class Division · 2026 · DOI

  • that includes the terms “ranking,” “separating,” “power,” and “worth.” She then hooks their own experiences with and observations of classism with a broader analysis using an analytical chart on the four levels of inequality -- internalized, interpersonal, societal, and institutional. Bridging internalized and interpersonal encounters with broader socioeconomic and political critique is the leap Jia hopes to make. To do this, she returns the children to their previous unit on immigration, a documentary they viewed on the NAFTA trade agreement, and patterns they noticed when looking at census data or when discussing the push and pull factors that spurred waves of immigrants during various historical epochs. In surfacing primary source photographs from their study of the ‘American Dream’ and encouraging them to think deeper about how institutional and foreign policies contour the limits and possibilities of economic mobility, Jia admits: “I did anticipate maybe some confusion between some of the different layers like maybe societal and institutional. I had that in the back of my mind. We've talked a lot about things, but it wasn't quite connecting. But I know this. As an educator, I can recognize it.” She vows to pick up from this reflection to build a more expansive analysis into the societal and institutional realms of economic policy and its far-reaching impact on communities and society itself. To some degree, Jia disagrees that there is a lack of resources available for elementary teachers on economic inequality.

    Undoing Neoclassical Economics in Elementary School: Three New York City Classrooms and the Teaching of Class Division · 2026 · DOI

  • While rich in macro-political insight, it leaves the micro-level dynamics of classroom and community practices underexplored, including how language is negotiated, resisted, or reinterpreted in everyday pedagogical settings thus limiting its empirical resonance with lived linguistic realities.

    Mohammed Errihani: Language, Power, and the Economics of Education in Morocco.Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2023, xix + 140 pp, Hb £129.99, ISBN 978-3-031-51593-4 · 2026 · DOI

  • Consequently, the results are not generalisable but serve as a critical case study with international relevance, given the shared challenges facing adult education systems globally, underscoring the need for further research into principals’ enactment strategies across diverse adult education settings and contexts.

    Principals’ enactment strategies: enacting education based on scientific foundation and proven experience in Swedish adult education · 2026 · DOI

  • Several limitations of this study must be acknowledged. First, the analysis of educational inequality relied on available data from PISA, which may not have captured all relevant aspects of educational inequality. PISA assesses 15-year-old students, meaning other age categories were omitted from the analysis, potentially overlooking significant trends and disparities in other age groups. This study focused on a specific type of equity in education: inequality of educational outcomes. In the theoretical framework, we discussed the advan- tages of this method. However, it is essential to remember that other approaches might focus on other aspects of educational equity and yield different results. Next, the focus on reading as the primary subject for analysis was decided because it provided the most extensive and comparable set of observations in PISA. While correlations between reading, mathematics, and science were very high, it is important to remember that using one sub- ject to represent overall educational inequality may not fully have captured the complexity of educational outcomes across all subjects. Also, the 2022 PISA wave was intentionally excluded from the analysis. Although including these data could have added more weight to the findings, the intention was to explore long-term trends in educational inequality. As a single significant event, the pandemic might have introduced shifts in these trends and complicated the interpretation of results. This decision aimed to provide a clearer under- standing of the long-term dynamics without the immediate effects of such an unprece- dented event. Considering these factors, further research could provide deeper insights into the dynamics of educational inequality.

    Inequality of educational outcomes: A comparative analysis of national trends based on data from PISA, 2000–2018 · 2026 · DOI

  • https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-026-09763-1 TRENDS/CASES Inequality of educational outcomes: A comparative analysis of national trends based on data from PISA, 2000–2018 Ekaterina Enchikova1 · Tiago Neves2 · Cibelle Toledo2 · Gil Nata3 Received: 15 December 2025 / Accepted: 12 May 2026 © The Author(s) 2026 Abstract Equity is crucial for education; it ensures all children have equal opportunities to succeed, regardless of their background. This article examines the inequality of educational outcomes using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) from 2000 through 2018. We analyzed long-term trends in educational inequality to assess changes experienced by participant countries. The study used the inter-decile range and the standard deviation (SD) of PISA scores to measure inequality for 62 countries (37 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] and 25 non-OECD). It provides a comprehensive view of each country’s situation and its dynamics over time, highlighting cases where changes are statistically significant. While some countries showed improvements in equity, not all these trends were statistically significant, indicating the difficulty of maintaining consistent progress. Negative trends were more pronounced and consistent in many cases. This study is relevant for policymakers and academics seeking to understand educational inequality and evaluate the long-term impact of interventions.

    Inequality of educational outcomes: A comparative analysis of national trends based on data from PISA, 2000–2018 · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper represents a contribution to research on neoliberal education policies by demonstrating that austerity operates as a discursive mode of governance-one that defines what is feasible, narrows policy alternatives, and justifies resource redistribution in the name of efficiency, while also addressing a gap in the research that does not provide insights into the in-depth effects of austerity in education, besides the economic results.

    Romanian education under austerity: a critical discourse analysis ofcrisis talks and policy legitimation · 2025 · DOI

  • Unlike the mainstream school sector, where diversity of provision has been positioned as a key facilitator of parental choice and improved standards, there is limited evidence on how diversity and choice operate in the AP sector.

    Choice and diversity in governance in the English alternative provision sector: Implications for educational equity · 2025 · DOI

  • This study focuses on one of them, which is thus far very under-researched: the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR, in Swedish SKR).

    Inclusive education policymaking in a multi-level governance education system: the case of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) · 2024 · DOI

  • Moreover, they underscore that decisions regarding research funding and support will likely not be made based on empirical considerations alone—but also on stakeholders’ values-based assessments regarding which models best hold researchers accountable for results, ensure the public interest is served, and efficiently spend limited research dollars.

    Warrants for Action: An Agenda for Continuous Improvement Research in Education · 2024 · DOI

  • Overall, we propose that working with ‘Oceania’ as a frame of vision in the history of education has the potential not only to address some big gaps in the literature, but also to productively challenge some of our field’s foundational narratives about progress, land, nations, system-building, and colonialism.

    Oceania and the history of education · 2023 · DOI

  • Far from being limited to the evolution of Swiss VET, these five trends describe movements that recent studies by CEDEFOP show also at the European level.

    Challenges, Future and Policy Orientations: The 1960s−1970s as Decisive Years for Swiss Vocational Education and Training · 2023 · DOI

  • Contrary to the macro discursive character of those studies that show that GE is complicit in the reproduction of hierarchisation and depoliticisation, our aim is to map the concrete micro discursive processes in order to find out how exactly are these processes enacted on the level of language, an academic avenue that has remained underresearched so far.

    Reproducing hierarchisation and depoliticisation: exploring discursive micro processes in global education · 2023 · DOI

  • The issues discussed cover scarcity of longitudinal research, paucity of scaling-up and generalization research, preference for success over failure presented in research, the need for a systems approach, lack of sociocultural sensitivity, technologization of research, scant attention to ODE for the underprivileged and disadvantaged, insufficient research on ODE policy, negligence of historical research, and disinterest in revisiting ODE theories.

    Critical Issues in Open and Distance Education Research · 2023 · DOI

  • Our discussion underscores how the OECD’s notion of “academic resilience,” which has come to dominate transnational policy debates, is quite narrow and limited by the measures it uses to assess student competencies.

    PISA, global reference societies, and policy borrowing: The promises and pitfalls of ‘academic resilience’ · 2022 · DOI

  • We close with a discussion of the range of international contexts from which the contributors to this issue write, arguing for a need to reimagine teachers and schooling in ways that are less limited by the systems and structures that have formed common international reference points in policy development thus far.

    Teachers and educational policy: Markets, populism, and im/possibilities for resistance · 2022 · DOI

  • To overcome the anthropogenic and global issues facing humanity today, young people will require a level of democracy, citizenship and altruism that is lacking in our current education system and is often antagonistic to the dominant neoliberal values, structures and underlying assumptions of our increasingly globalized education systems.

    Exploring the Inherent Tensions at the Nexus of Education for Sustainable Development and Neoliberalism · 2022 · DOI

  • Whilst the literature recognises the mainly discursive sources of legitimacy which the OECD derives from its testing regime, especially PISA, what remains unexplored is how exactly it has created the legitimacy to monitor SDG 4 – an arena where it has not been previously involved.

    Generating and managing legitimacy: how the OECD established its role in monitoring sustainable development goal 4 · 2022 · DOI

  • In focusing on middle leaders as policy translators, this research makes several important contributions to scholarship: empirical data is provided to support and expand on policy enactment theory, the limited research base on middle leadership is developed, and understandings of how school self-evaluation plays out in schools are strengthened.

    Middle leaders as policy translators: prime actors in the enactment of policy · 2021 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Global Educational Policies and Reforms

Most recent work

Find a gap in your own Global Educational Policies and Reforms sub-topic

This page shows what the Global Educational Policies and Reforms literature already flags as unresolved. To narrow it to your specific question, run the guided finder — it searches the gap library on demand and checks candidates against 250M+ OpenAlex works.

Open the Research Gap Finder →

Related topics in Social Sciences

Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
832 open questions
Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
784 open questions
Online and Blended Learning
745 open questions
Science Education and Pedagogy
597 open questions
Higher Education Research Studies
588 open questions
Mathematics Education and Teaching Techniques
563 open questions
Intimate Partner and Family Violence
519 open questions
Early Childhood Education and Development
486 open questions
265 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 21,779 Global Educational Policies and Reforms papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

Tools for your next paper

Gaps & Literature SearchFind open questions in any field — 120,000+ open gaps mined from our own library.Pre-CheckIs your paper ready? A Tier 1–5 acceptance probability in seconds.Journal FinderA ranked shortlist of target journals from a 17,500-venue index.Duplicate Publication CheckerCheck prior-publication & salami-slicing risk across 8 sources.Citation GeneratorFreeA DOI or title → APA, MLA, Vancouver, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS. No signup.Graphical Abstract MakerFreeTurn your findings into a colorblind-safe graphical abstract.

Compare the category — Honest roundups of the AI research tools, ours listed alongside the alternatives.

Command palette

Jump anywhere, run any action.