This Education Policy Perspective serves as Part A in a two-part series of policy papers on "Promoting Quality and Excellence in Higher Education and VET". This first paper (Part A) reviews recent policy developments in the external evaluation and quality assurance of higher education and vocational education and training (VET)…

Purpose: Higher education institutions are required to evaluate program quality through cyclical program review processes. Despite often being considered the "gold standard" of academic review, there persists dissatisfaction with the lack of integration of program review findings into other planning processes, such as budgeting,…

Increasing instructional quality in higher education is a key goal of educational development (ED) work, yet demonstrating complex outcomes remains challenging and lacks practical guidance. Evaluating ED services often relies on a reductionist approach characterized by linear assumptions of causal pathways to measure the extent to which…

Rigorous evidence of program effectiveness has become increasingly important with the 2015 passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). One question that has not yet been fully explored is whether program evaluations carried out or commissioned by developers produce larger effect sizes than evaluations conducted by independent third parties.…

In 2021, California committed to providing universal prekindergarten (UPK) for all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025-26. UPK includes several early learning programs, including transitional kindergarten (TK), the California State Preschool Program (CSPP), Head Start, and expanded learning opportunities to provide full-day early…

Social and political change is occurring in Aotearoa New Zealand and tikanga, matauranga, te reo Maori (the Maori language) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) are increasingly being recognised in diverse political and legal contexts. This article explores whether the political science discipline in Aotearoa New Zealand is keeping pace…

The year 2015 was significant for the arena of international development, as UNESCO's "Education for All" agenda was replaced by "Education 2030", which would identify minimum standards of education quality. The OECD had been working on extending its existing PISA assessment into low- and middle-income countries through PISA…

This paper explores the notion of impact in the context of academic development programs and considers how it can be described and understood. We argue that impact has a range of meanings and academic development programs such as graduate certificates have a broad group of stakeholders and hence the impact is different for each group depending on…

Conventionally, quantitative surveys are used for student evaluations in higher education, but the validity of this practice has been questioned. In the present study, we investigated a qualitative method for evaluating a bachelor's programme. Forty-one first-year students and twenty-eight third-year students on a bachelor's programme in Public…

In December 2014, then Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan announced that $226 million had been awarded to 18 states under the Preschool Development Grants (PDG) program. Duncan said that expanding access to high quality preschool programs was critically important, and that the states receiving funding would serve as a model for others. The goal…

Many African countries have developed policies to reform their education system in order to widen participation in higher education. To achieve this, open, online and distance education based models have been advocated as the most viable delivery tools in expanding access to higher education. However, the policy analysis of Kenya, Rwanda and…

Measurable targets, key performance indicators, value for money--whatever we may think of the "impact agenda," it looks like it is here to stay. Are we trapped in a positivist, new managerialist spiral of demonstrating the value of our work, or can we take the lead in reframing the discourse on how educational development proves its…

This article is a historical narrative about the contribution the Holy Ghost Congregation made in the educational development of Nigeria. It is narrative because it highlights the events and the work of the early Spiritan missionaries that brought education and its benefits to Nigerians. It is pedagogic because it describes the methods these Holy…

In the education system of Serbia significant results have been achieved in the last ten years regarding the establishment and development of the evaluation system in education and the practical application of various types and procedures of evaluation. This paper gives a short overview of ways in which evaluation is carried out on elementary,…

The development of critical thinking skills among learners is a common educational goal across graduate theological schools. The purpose of this article is to provide a survey of some of the primary historical influences of the critical thinking movement in higher education in the United States and the movement's impact on graduate…