This review essay examines three new books on higher education and sustainability. It explores a number of the issues raised in the books, in particular, the meaning of a transformative orientation towards sustainability. The idea of loose and tight conceptual framings of sustainability is employed. A tight framing is where an institution embodies…

Shared governance has been a key historical characteristic of higher education although this form of governance has come under increased pressure in recent decades. It is often argued that shared governance is less relevant for tackling the challenges related to a more dynamic environment of the sector. This paper discusses underlying premises for…

Supervisors, administrators, and directors of special education usually use the authoritative leadership style when supervising their special education staffs; however, collaborative leadership styles are slowly overtaking authoritative leadership styles. These leaders have the task of producing an environment where the culture is inclusive, the…

What drives governments with similar revenues to publicly provide very different amounts of goods for which private substitutes are available? Key examples are education and health care. This paper compares spending by Brazilian municipalities on pre-primary education--a good that is also provided privately--with spending on public infrastructure…

Success in Sight focuses on the interrelated parts of an education system. This systemic school improvement intervention is designed to address schools' specific needs while building their capacities to plan, implement, and evaluate school improvement practices. It is intended to help schools, leadership teams, and teachers systemically engage in…

As a new decade dawns, teachers stand at the center of a policy vortex. They serve as the primary focus of one of the Obama administration's four pillars of educational reform--effective teachers and leaders. Educational reformers of all stripes have focused tremendous energy on thinking of ways to identify effective teachers and in turn recruit,…

In the post-Mao era, the Chinese government carried out a series of education reforms to modernise education provision. This paper explores two related aspects of these reforms through comparative case study research in three different school locations within the same region in China. The first focus is upon system reform initiated through…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine and compare the school excellence model (SEM) approach adopted by Singapore and the school-based management (SBM) approach adopted by Hong Kong. It discusses the implications of such a strategy and the challenges that both Singapore and Hong Kong schools face in navigating a new paradigm of managerialism while…

Investigates positive claims about total quality management (TQM), comparing employee responses from an organization not implementing TQM with those from two organizations using TQM. Finds organizational commitment and perceived organizational support to be higher in TQM organizations, along with more positive employee-top management and coworker…

This article draws on the Sustainability Education in European Primary Schools (SEEPS) Project, which was an EU-funded project examining approaches to sustainability education. As part of that project the team developed a case study approach to the individual country contributions to the overall project, which concluded by developing a model based…

Compares the Group Valence Model (GVM) to several derived versions of the Valence Distribution Model (VDM), as they relate to the group problem-solving process. Suggests that, not withstanding predictive accuracy, the VDM seems generally inferior to the GVM, which consistently accounts for more of the decision-making phenomenon. Discusses…

This paper analyzes changes in decision-making in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and tries to identify trends in these countries' reforms. In general, the reforms initiated by these five countries redesigned the loci of decision-making between the government levels, modified the modes of decision at these levels, and…

Current plans to use National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results to compare and rank states may lead to a perception of NAEP as a national achievement test representing a national curriculum. NAEP procedures should be reformulated to enhance curriculum coherence, instruction, and participation by local and state educators. (TJH)

Despite ambiguous results of corporate restructuring efforts, higher education has adopted many of the methods used in hostile corporate takeovers and leveraged buyouts, affecting "ownership" of the educational process by faculty and the relationship between faculty and administration. A common element in successful restructuring is the…

Examines three assumptions that underlie the argument that shared governance must be reformed, and based on the professional literature and experience, counters them. The assumptions are that the bureaucracy appropriate for industry is appropriate for a higher education institution, democratic decision making undermines effective college and…