Nationally, the pathway model -- commonly defined as "a highly structured, coherent education experience that is built around and through an area of study" -- has emerged as the preferred structural approach to deliver the curriculum at community colleges. The pathway model provides a new hope to community colleges to create a solution…

This study applies Clark and Estes's (2008) gap analysis model to understand how a state education agency's decision making, during reform policy implementation, impacts the success of the initiative. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to assess the effect of the Texas Education Agency's (TEA) decision making, during the policy design and…

While university change initiatives have become more common in the face of changing learner needs and higher education funding, many fail to produce desired effects, even when guided by organizational change models. The purpose of this study was to document a successful change process in an engineering department at a Hispanic-serving institution…

Purpose: We examine the ways state education agency (SEA) and local education agency (LEA) leaders interpret and use educational policy to guide the provision of services for multilingual students classified as English learners (ELs) in their contexts. Our inquiry focuses on the external factors leaders describe that either enable or constrain…

This study investigated how open and distance learning (ODL) reform was managed within the Institute of Extramural Studies (IEMS), at the National University of Lesotho (NUL). The reform was introduced during the 2017/18 academic year with first-year programmes in three departments: (a) Adult Education; (b) Business and Management Development; and…

Statement of Purpose and Method of Study: The purpose of this study is to describe the perspectives, processes, and experiences identified during the implementation of the SIG Transformation Model in a rural school district in Mississippi. The Transformation Model is one of the four approved prescriptive models identified by the federal government…

Due to the "wicked problem" of the Academy's resistance to innovation, new teaching and learning programs struggle to become integrated into the fabric of the Academy, which slows the uptake of evidence-based practices. This wicked problem is rooted in the lack of slow, intentional mechanisms for cultural change in the Academy. In this…

School leadership is a critical factor in school improvement. The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) and Region 4 Comprehensive Center (R4CC) have strengthened school leadership through implementation of the Delaware Leadership Network and the Delaware Principal Supervisor Leadership Program. These two major efforts, collaboratively designed…

National curriculum standards for different countries mean some International Baccalaureate (IB) schools must often balance IB and national standards. Literature on how schools find this balance is limited. Using a qualitative case study design, we examined the perspectives of teachers of English in a Chinese IB school that recently employed a…

We studied a case of a school in a high need setting that undertook multiple simultaneous initiatives during a major school reorganization. We focused on the simultaneous implementations of two comprehensive initiatives, one related to ambitious mathematics teaching and one related to the Understanding by Design curriculum writing process. We…

Purpose: This article aims to explore the implications of means-ends decoupling at the state level for the implementation of the global model of the research university by the deans and department heads. Means-ends decoupling at the state level implies that the policies and practices of the state are disconnected from its core goal of creating…

The study aims to find out the relationship between the task-oriented leaders' behavior and organizational performance in higher education institutions as well as to identify that how a taskoriented leader will perform to face the challenges of the gaps between planning and implementation of educational policy reforms in higher education…

The job of an effective school supervisor has multiple faces. They are supposed to be mentors, strategists and managers as well as the representatives of the up-to-date regulations. Top-down changes or mandated changes originate at government or bureaucratic level. Bottom-up changes are the ones initiated by opponents of an organization. It is…

This study contributes to the limited research on the implementation of pathways in a community college. While most of the literature to date focuses on providing guidance on the structural changes necessary for implementation, this study focuses on the social and cultural aspects of implementation. Using case study research design, a team of…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in 2015, signaled a major shift in the roles of states and districts in supporting school improvement. Under ESSA, state education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs) have more responsibility and flexibility in developing and implementing plans, informed by local context, to support the…