School practices and policies are often influenced by various research, nonprofit, for-profit, and philanthropic organizations. To help understand their influence, this article provides a framework accounting for the variety of school improvement organizations (SIOs) and summarizes debates regarding their benefits and risks. I cluster SIOs as…

The set of appendices in this volume is a companion to the report "Federal Efforts Towards Investing in Innovation in Education Through the i3 Fund: A Summary of Grantmaking and Evidence-Building." The goal of the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) was to build high-quality evidence about effective…

Every Australian student has a right to a complete, relevant and responsive education that is designed and delivered to give them the educational success to which they aspire. To achieve this for First Nations students and their families, schools and systems should be culturally responsive and strive to create culturally safe learning…

In this article, we use data from ethnography-inspired studies of eight Swedish schools. We describe and analyse how a number of neoliberal-inspired economic and political processes have (re)organised social and relational practices in local school settings. There is an increased focus on individuality in the everyday working lives of teachers,…

Home-school transport is an expensive component within many education systems, and is particularly costly in countries where school choice is encouraged. Within divided societies like Northern Ireland, a combination of school choice, academic selection and a divided society results in educational divisions which pose an even larger problem for the…

School heads or principals have various roles in developing school quality, which can often be stressful. In this study we investigated principals' perceptions of quality schools, the practices performed to improve quality, and the stress and support factors involved. We adopted a qualitative inductive content analysis approach to analyse the…

For decades, the Nordic countries have been admired for their inclusive education systems within egalitarian societies, bolstered by PISA studies and global calls to ensure inclusive education as a human right. This paper contrasts idealised perspectives on Nordic education with internal experiences, exploring recent challenges to the relationship…

Business leaders have long been engaged in all levels of education reform, but the economic crisis of the 1980s spurred a renewed sense of urgency and activity. Business leaders saw education as key to addressing many of the country's economic problems, including high unemployment, foreign competition, and declining productivity. As the economy…

The "world culture" framework posits a convergence in the organisation of education across the world. On the other hand, scholars observing teaching practices inside classrooms find significant variation among nations and regions of the world. This study examined the global change patterns of classroom practices at the between- and…

The premise of this article is that studies of distributed leadership could benefit from further incorporation of institutional approaches to better understand complex reform demands facing school leaders working for instructional improvement. We begin by articulating the core components of a distributed perspective on leadership and of an…

Educators and schools have a responsibility to ensure that young people become engaged and knowledgeable citizens. A recent report on high school civics education nationwide, "The State of Civics Education," finds a wide variation in state requirements and levels of youth engagement. Only nine states and the District of Columbia require…

Despite the prevalence of corporate and performative models of school governance within and across different education systems, there are various cases of uneven, hybrid expressions of New Public Management (NPM) that reveal the contingency of global patterns of rule. Adopting a 'decentred approach' to governance (Bevir, M. 2010. "Rethinking…

This paper explores multiple logics of accountability by examining patterns of control of various school functions under different accountability systems. Research has shown that accountability is a global phenomenon, but how accountability is understood and enacted is locally contextualized, which implies the existence of multiple logics of…

There is a faltering sense of democracy in America's current political climate due to polarized opinions about leadership's decisions and antagonistic political parties. John Dewey (1916) proposed that education is the place to foster democracy, as schools can provide a platform to actively engage students in authentic democratic experiences that…

This article explores the uptake of so-called fast policy solutions to problems in different education policy contexts and highlights the potential impacts that can arise from such policymaking approaches. We draw upon recent literature and theorising around notions of fast policy and evidence-informed policymaking, which suggests that, in an…