Nations transfer educational reform models for the systematic improvement of education. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Gulf Cooperation Council states, which have implemented primarily Western decentralized reform models to overhaul their educational systems. This article reports non-empirical research, written as a conceptual analysis…

The trend with organisational adoption of virtual learning environments (VLE) seems to be cyclical. Initially, a decentralised approach was adopted, wherein each department implemented different learning environments or mixtures of technology, often developed in-house. The last five years have seen an increased centralisation of learning…

Explores Florida teachers' failure to accept state-legislated learning models imposed on them. Although 86.7 percent of teachers surveyed identified "reaching" students as the major intrinsic reward in teaching, 74 percent claimed that legislated learning questioned their competency and limited the scope of their work and/or political…

The 19th-century emergence of a centralized, state-controlled school system helped stabilize government and legitimize a state model during a revolutionary period in French history. The centralized model assisted national integration goals by fabricating a symbolic public space. This ambitious political construction may be coming apart. (Contains…

Clarifies key propositions of the central-curriculum-control model and presents teachers' beliefs about effects of centralized policies on practice, based on interviews with teachers from three urban districts. Curriculum-control policies contribute to content standardization and standard setting. They control what is taught, rather than how it is…

Challenges a central orthodoxy of school-effectiveness work-that schools should strive to become more consistent learning environments. Ironically, the effective-school model has become embedded in the educational politics of the UK and USA, where conditions do not favor successful implementation. Educators must first address rampant socioeconomic…

The educational assessment quality assurance and control practices of Germany, Sweden, France, New Zealand, and Australia are compared to illustrate the considerable variety of approaches and some of the social factors that contribute to this variety. In Germany there is considerable variation from one province to another, and quality assurance…

This document provides a brief history of urban school governance and summarizes some of the unique governance structures that have emerged in six American cities and one Canadian province over recent years. By 1920, ward-based systems in most urban areas had given way to systems with a high degree of centralization. These systems were more…

A model of state policymaking affecting private higher education involves three constructs of policy posture: laissez faire; central planning; and market competition. Relationships of the policies and postures to state characteristics and policy outcome proxies are explored, and policy implications are drawn. The analysis suggests that…