This report by Paul Woodgates explores change initiatives in higher education institutions, considering why they are needed and why they are difficult to deliver. He outlines how universities should carefully design change projects to maximise impact and likelihood of success.

School choice has influenced several educational reforms in the US and across the world in the last decades. These reforms have often promoted school autonomy, parental choice, and competition between schools to improve quality and equity. Whether those reforms work in practice is well examined, but the roles of policy design such as the extent to…

Over the last four years, initial teacher education in Wales has been fundamentally reformed. The stimulus for those reforms were concerns about the quality of current provision, but more importantly a recognition by the Welsh Government that if their wider reforms of curriculum and assessment were to succeed, then teachers themselves had a key…

Authors in this paper present the design and implementation of daily routines in Slovenian kindergartens. Slovenian national document for preschool education, "Curriculum for Kindergartens" (1999), describes daily kindergarten activities (communication and interaction with and among children, use of compliment and reprehension, and rules…

This article demonstrates the value of theoretical ex-ante evaluation of policy programs. We show how a specific policy might not achieve its objectives and illustrate the elements of the policy, which need improvement. These conclusions are based on a reconstruction and evaluation of the theory behind a policy program that aims to increase…

Evidence suggests a common and consistent failure by college faculty to read available signals of improprieties in college athletics programs. The structure of the link between academics and athletics should be reexamined and the responsibility of the faculty reconsidered. (MSE)

A discussion of the state of American community colleges analyzes their principal functions, describes and analyzes current criticisms of the system, and evaluates trends in finance, governance, and administration. Trends in the California system are examined. (Author/MSE)

Aspects of higher education that differ in Australia and North America are highlighted, including government's role, governance, institutional advancement activities, the president's role, faculty, program design, and students. (MSE)

This paper examines how to encourage widespread adoption of comprehensive school-reform models--adoption outside the schools and districts that took part in the development process. It refers to such models as "design-based" schools. The paper defines what is meant by a school design and describes receptive school and district…

This four-part volume addresses design principles for introducing democratic forms in workplaces, educational institutions, and social institutions, based on a trend toward participative democracy in Australia. Following an introduction, part I sets the context with two papers: "The Agenda for the Next Wave" and "Educational…

The individual responsible for spearheading reform for the education of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students in Linda Vista Elementary School (San Diego, California) describes the process, issues, and outcomes of the initiative in this theme issue. Linda Vista Elementary School has a student population that is 77 percent LEP. The personalized…

Business leaders created New American Schools (NAS) to develop "break-the-mold" designs for schools serving grades K-12. The notion of a design was meant to convey a coherent and comprehensive set of school-level practices that unified a school behind a goal of high performance by all students. These practices would cover all grades, all students…