Current tendencies in educational research in Sweden are presented and compared to Australia. We here refer to; organization of research, research allocation, publication patterns, and assessments of research qualities. Different trajectories of educational research were identified, where Australian research was organized as a field of study,…

The paper presents the findings of the first year of a nationally funded Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project on the quality management of online learning environments by and through distributed leadership. The project is being undertaken by five Australian universities with major commitments to online and distance education.…

Assessment practices that aim to promote both quality and equity may be compromised in a higher education market where students are consumers and grades the currency exchanged for measures of success. In such a climate, academics report feeling pressured to make course content and assessment less challenging in order to obtain positive student…

This paper argues that the current approach to educational quality formation in transnational higher education promotes educational imperialism, and that guidelines and practices should be altered to embrace context-sensitive measures of quality. The claims are sustained by findings from a study that investigated how academics understood and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess costs in the National and University Library of Croatia for processing Croatian web resources and the maintenance and development of the service, and to analyse the present organisation and workflow of their processing, and to propose improvements. Design/methodology/approach: The assessment period…

This article presents the findings of a survey, conducted on league tables and rankings systems worldwide, including seventeen standard ones and one non-standard league table. Despite the capacity of existing league tables and rankings to meet the interest of the public of transparency and information on higher education institutions, ranking…

It is suggested that approaches to research assessment vary according to national context. In the United States, higher education is dominated by market forces; in Britain and Australia, emphasis is on interinstitutional competitiveness; in northern Europe, focus is overall system efficiency. Performance indicators and peer review of research are…

It is argued that university policies and procedures concerning assurance of quality education are framed with little regard for significant differences among disciplines, and that some common approaches to assuring academic quality impinge on some aspects of research, undergraduate teaching, and graduate work. Focus is on England and Australia.…

This article provides a critical discussion of the neoliberal reforms of higher education focusing on new managerialism and New Public Management. It also distinguishes between democratic and market accountability regimes, examining how the former arise from classical liberalism and the latter from neoliberalism. The article then examines…

This study discusses benchmarking the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning between two universities with different missions: one an Australian campus-based metropolitan university and the other a British distance-education provider. It argues that the differences notwithstanding, it is possible to…

This paper aims to provide a critical review and comparison of the following sets of standards of practice for teachers: (1) The Victorian Interim Teacher Class Standards (ITCS), especially Interim Teacher Class Standards for Beginning Teachers; (2) Professional Standards for Teachers; (3) The National Competencies for Beginning Teaching; (4) The…

This report compares the provision of vocational education and training (VET) in Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom. It finds that training policies are increasingly based on similar general principles which promote the improvement and reform of vocational education and training, although the implementation of these principles tends to…

Providing detailed, constructive and helpful feedback is an important contribution to effective student learning. Quality assurance is also required to ensure consistency across all students and reduce error rates. However, with increasing workloads and student numbers these goals are becoming more difficult to achieve. An automated feedback…

This paper is concerned with the strategies being adopted for vocational education and training (VET) in Australia and the lessons that could be learned for them from policies in other countries. Six issues are considered in the paper, each relates to or more of the objectives and particular strategies in the Australia's National Strategy for…

During the past decade, funding mechanisms for universities and technical education institutions and colleges have undergone massive restructuring in developed and developing countries alike. Governmental support has generally decreased, resulting in greater reliance on fee-based education or creation of privately sponsored engineering/technical…