In a globalized world, universities face challenges adapting to changing environmental pressures and expectations of legitimacy. Studies on the topic have tended to focus on universities in North America and Europe, while Chinese universities have received less attention, perhaps due to their status as latecomers to global higher education. Based…

Since the late nineteenth century, China, as a latecomer to modernization, has prioritized Western learning. The first modern university was created in China in 1895 to serve such a purpose with little linkage to China's rich indigenous cultural traditions. Modelled on European and North American experiences and operating in a Confucian…

In 2004, Ray Land produced extensive literature on the 12 orientations of academic developers. These orientations provided academic developers with a useful tool through which they have been able to better articulate their roles and their place in academia. We have used the orientations model to establish, compare, and contrast the identity of…

The last 40 years have seen great political attention paid to issues of inclusion in education, both from international organisations and also individual nations. This flexible concept has been adopted enthusiastically in education reforms concerned with increased standardisation of teaching and learning, decentralisation of education management,…

Although many adult basic education programs offer distance learning (DL) for GED (General Educational Development) and English as a Second Language learners, this topic has received little scholarly attention. This article examines the availability, usage, and effectiveness of DL for rural GED candidates in Pennsylvania; students' demographic and…

Social capital--the social relations between people--is an important component of the family environment and is crucial for the creation of human capital for the next generation. Drawing on James S. Coleman's theory of family capital, this study focuses on parents' utilization of social capital to support children's literacy acquisition in four…

This paper reports research in five European universities, in four countries between 2004 and 2008. The research explored and compared institutional contexts for academic development and the interpretations and reflections of a number of academic developers on the organizational position and role of academic development, and of…

This article analyzes the findings from a three-state study of teacher induction policy. It looks within and across Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin to explore the landscape and experience of teacher induction. Although the orientation and conception of each state's policy is similar, the states represent three different structural approaches to…

Purpose: The paper seeks first to present an overview of the corporate university landscape in Germany contrasting it with the US-American corporate university market and, second, to outline the development in Germany during the last 15 years and to have a look at future trends such as learning alliances. Design/methodology/approach: The…

This article critically reflects upon the "divides" among actors within two currently popular education policies in low-income countries: decentralisation and Universal Primary Education (UPE). Current literatures suggest that the existing decentralisation framework tends to overlook the "divides" among actors that often impede…

This paper attempts to classify Hong Kong schools along four possible stages of development framed in a dynamic model of organizational learning. Factors governing the development of 67 sampled primary and secondary Hong Kong schools are compared and contrasted. Interviews with the concerned principals in diverse phases of progression further…

This article identifies the increasing demands on United Kingdom universities brought about by the expanded government agenda and the entry of higher numbers of more diverse students. It analyses the changes in organizational structures and cultures and identifies a centralizing tendency in terms of power to meet these demands. There is a focus on…

The quest for legitimacy is particularly acute for organizations that are in the initial stages of their lifecycles. Without recognition and acknowledgment of the "right to exist", new institutions may falter or fail because of lack of acceptance. Surmounting the barriers that block the road to legitimacy can be very difficult, but there…