There has been increased attention to the importance of teachers and teacher quality in developing and sustaining successful education systems for some time now (Barber and Mourshed in How the world's best performing school systems come out on top, McKinsey & Company, New York, 2007; Darling-Hammond et al. in Empowered educators: how…

Factors external and internal to social work practice have caused our profession to question its role and identity. The emergence of evidence-based or evidenced informed practices forces the profession to reexamine its unique identity and its historical roots. This article addresses the problems in the dominant paradigm guiding our profession, the…

In a recent experience in the Manitoba provincial government, an active, varied, and largely homegrown system-wide "open systems" approach for the design and delivery of staff development and training became operational in only 18 months. The development and implementation of the strategy and some significant results are recounted.…

In response to a growing shift from management by activity to results-based management systems, the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) undertook a study to identify issues, expected outcomes, and recommended approaches related to the implementation of a results-based system for the Canadian College Partnership Program (CCPP). Data…

The six papers in this publication discuss how reasonable planning processes can be established and how budgeting procedures can be related to the wider planning process. In the first selection, K. George Pedersen establishes the current context of educational planning and decisionmaking with emphasis on economic implications, and he outlines…

The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) in Edmonton, Alberta, has undertaken a project called LOGging Our Curriculum. The goals of the project, which involves creating a fully outcomes-based curriculum across the institution and housing that curriculum in a database that is accessible to NAIT instructors over the World Wide Web, are as…

The following are included in section 1: "Purposes and Methods of Sistematizacion" (Beder); "At the Crossroads" (Bingman, White); "Relationship between Literacy and Numeracy Test Scores on the 'Survey of Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities'" (Blunt); "Vaclav Havel, Postmodernism, and Modernity" (Briton,…

Alberta Learning was created in May 1999 to enhance the focus of the government of Alberta, Canada, on lifelong learning and equipping all Albertans with the information and skills needed to live and work in the information age. During its first year of operation, Alberta Learning focused on its core businesses of basic learning, adult learning,…