The research reports how a particular school reform initiative--'Project 600'--constituted students in one school region Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon topological understandings of power and recent work on the visualisation of data in education, as well as the insights of key staff involved in the project, we reveal the complex and…

This article presents findings on the institutional logics of reading instruction in an urban school district, portraying how district leaders and coaches enacted two logics. Findings are grounded in observation, interview, and document data on district leaders and literacy coaches from a 13-month period. Using neoinstitutional theory, this…

In recent years, "creating world-class universities" has been an important project on the Chinese mainland. With the all-encompassing internationalization of higher education in the global market, it is of the utmost importance that the quality of universities be improved and that some of the top universities are pushed to become…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how national board administrators, more precisely, officials at the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) have perceived the primary influencing factors, or "regulators", of the national core curriculum reform and the success of the implementation. The alignment…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how the countervailing processes for enhancing academic excellence based on professional norms are balanced out with the market-oriented processes of standardisation and performance management in a university. Further, the authors aim to explore how and if organisational learning occurs in…

Having been on the agenda in Finnish policy-making for a decade, tuition fees for students outside the European Union and the European Economic Area became reality in the beginning of 2016. Drawing on institutional theory the current article tracks this development through the analysis of documents and interviews on different levels. The…

Purpose: Instructional coaching is framed as both a means for systemic and individual reform. These competing conceptualizations of coaching as a mechanism for change have not been systematically examined, and therefore, we know little about how the framing of instructional coaching initiatives affects the enactment of coaching. In response to…

Professional learning and development of school leaders are considered keys to educational change. However, a growing body of research has identified how difficult it is to design professional leadership programmes that make a difference in leaders' professional practice. Drawing on the framework of expansive learning and data from the six-year…

This study followed mindset changes in elementary teachers as they transitioned from traditional grading to standards based grading during the earliest stages of the change process. A pre- and post-survey of mindsets of participants, individual interviews, and a focus group interview were conducted. While the results of the pre- and post-survey…

Between 2006 and 2010, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction intervened in 128 low-performing schools, combining approaches consistent with school restructuring and transformation. In improved schools, local educators reconstructed key school functions, a distinctly nonlinear process more like the work of skilled craftsmen than that…

This study aims to analyze the internal and external factors that influence the development of SB-IPB, analyze SB-IPB strategic foresight and designing SB-IPB strategic architecture. This research is a descriptive research in the form of a case study. Respondents in this study are experts from inside and outside of IPB who are policy makers,…

Research that aimed to examine teachers' experiences whilst implementing a reform approach to mathematics teaching in an Irish primary school forms the basis of this paper. In particular, factors that contributed to changing mathematics practice in this case study school are outlined. The school engaged in professional development (PD) that…

A number of factors influence the motivations of employers to train their workforce and the ways in which they engage with the training system. This study combines a national survey and interviews with Australian employers and registered training organisations (RTOs) to provide a comprehensive picture of the way in which employers navigate the…

In this paper, we describe one secondary school's radical attempt to rethink the shape and purpose of education for its pupils, and its subsequent return to more traditional methods in the face of pressures of performativity and accountability. Framing our analysis within activity theory and its emphasis on contradiction as a driver for change, we…

Despite uncertainties regarding the effects of outcome-focused reforms on teaching practices, the political confidence in the potential of such reforms to create educational change remains high. This article problematizes the assumption that two such Swedish reforms (grades and national tests in younger years) can function as an impetus for…