Despite the widespread education reform discourses attempting to alleviate high-stakes examination pressure and narrowly test-driven education systems in East Asia, none have been as systematic and drastic as the Free Year Program (FYP) recently implemented in South Korea. The FYP provides middle school students with a year-long reprieve from…

This article reports on the experiences of teachers at a small rural school located in the North Coast region of New South Wales in Australia who participated in a school improvement project based on an approach developed over many years by David Townsend and Pam Adams in Alberta, Canada. The project involved monthly meetings between the teachers…