Turkey's Ministry of National Education aims to identify and develop valuable characteristics to prepare the nation's young for their professional life as adults. The Ministry has been conducting an extensive and comprehensive review of the educational system since the beginning of 2000. Educational system was implemented in time for the 2012/2013…

This article evaluates the curriculum reform implemented in Turkey in 2004 by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The curriculum reform targeted primary school education and reorganized the curriculum for several primary school courses. The AKP declared that renewed curricula would replace the former behaviorist approach, which had been…

By means of data from the most comprehensive source of teacher data in the nation, Schools and Public School Teacher Staffing Survey (SASS), we designed a follow-up quantitative study to test the effects of two decades of national policy mandates on instructional time allotments for core academic subjects. We used data from the SASS data from…

This case study examines the experiences of two fifth grade teachers as they dealt with district mandates while trying to address their high-poverty urban children's learning needs. It reveals their personal struggles that led to both compliance and resistance. In this case, the act of finding the space to engage in the intellectual and creative…

In this article, the author discusses Iowa's deference to local autonomy. Unlike most states, Iowa continues its long history of local independence by allowing districts to set their own goals. In the late 1990s, when the nation's governors and business leaders threw their weight behind the push for statewide academic standards, Iowa begged to…

On March 13, 2009, Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska, an eminent leader in gifted education, was presented with a Festschrift, a volume of articles submitted by colleagues as well as former and current graduate students to celebrate her life's work and influence on the field. This volume is a free supplement from The College of William and Mary's Center…