Virtual work environments (VWEs) have been used in the private sector for more than a decade, but the United States Marine Corps (USMC), as a whole, has not yet taken advantage of associated benefits. The USMC construct parallels the bureaucratic organizational culture and uses an antiquated information technology (IT) infrastructure. During an…

Interactive relationships in online learning communities can influence the process and quality of knowledge building. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between network structures and social knowledge building in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums in a learning management system. The…

This position paper explores the nature of community involvement in education, focusing particularly on Botswana schools. The exploration was made against a decision taken by the Ministry of Education to end the partnership venture established in the 1980s between itself and the local communities in the running of the junior secondary school. The…

Catholic education in the United States is currently facing a period of unprecedented change. An intensifying array of challenges are confronting Catholic schools, and dioceses around the country are scrambling to develop strategies to answer these challenges. In many dioceses, these challenges have forced a radical rethinking of the way schools…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between workplace learning and psychological variables, such as learning competency, motivation, curiosity, self-esteem and locus of control, and organizational variables, such as centralization of power, formality, merit system and communication. The studied population consisted entirely…

This paper considers professional development in a context that is familiar and problematic to teaching teams in tertiary education everywhere, that of delivering online programmes with an ever-decreasing complement of staff. The Teaching Qualification Further Education (TQFE) teaching team at University of Dundee confronted the reality of reduced…

Judicial decisions focusing on equal educational opportunity involve significant issues of educational governance and often involve explicit questions about the extent to which authority to make educational decisions should be centralized or decentralized across various institutions and entities. This review aims at clarifying scholars'…

This paper analyses teachers' attitudes towards the use of textbooks as a means of understanding what happens in a heavily centralized education system. Whilst the research is based on a particular country, the lessons can be applied to many parts of the globalized education system. The research question here is to find out whether the teachers…

A case study was conducted in 2006-07 to explore how one US campus implemented a centralised e-assessment system. The study specifically measured the extent of adoption by faculty members, identified their reasons for adoption and evaluated the impact on teaching and learning. The purposes of the system, entitled researching learning (REAL, a…

The past two decades have seen an emerging trend in urban school governance: mayors taking the reins of school district leadership. The impetus for putting the mayor in charge of a city's schools usually stems from at least one of the following being documented or generally perceived about an urban school district: (1) Lack of accountability; (2)…

Focusing on the current timetabling process at the University of Toronto Mississauga, I apply David Wesson's theoretical framework in order to understand how increasing enrolment interacts with a decentralized timetabling process to limit the flexibility of course schedules, and the resultant impact on educational quality. I then apply Robert…

This article argues that there has been a clear shift in leadership approaches from those where the leader is in control and commanding i.e., power-based leadership to one where there is empowerment. Here the power comes from the followers and is shared. Burns concepts of transactional and transformational leadership are used interchangeably with…

Sweden has undertaken major national reforms of its school sector, which, consequently, has been classified as one of the most decentralized ones in the OECD. This paper investigates whether local tax base, grants, and preferences affected local school resources differently as decentralization took place. We find that municipal tax base affects…

This paper reviews research on small rural primary schools in Finland and analyses it under three thematic foci: the relationship between the local rural school and the surrounding community, the small rural primary school as a learning environment, and the teachers' profession in this context. Over 30% of Finnish primary schools are small rural…

This issue is devoted to the publication of a doctoral thesis by Dr. David McKenzie, one of New Zealand's leading educational historians. The research in this essay was completed over 30 years ago. Inevitably, the standpoint from which it was written has altered with the passage of time. No one then, for example, could have predicted the strength…