This article investigates how school principals in Sierra Leone interpret and enact a national education reform program. Through a sense-making lens, this qualitative study explores how the principals perceive and enact a reform program while maintaining their leadership role within the schools and communities they serve. In this study, we collect…

Throughout much of the past quarter century, standards, testing, and accountability have composed the North Star of education reform. But over that time, the string of reform initiatives that failed to live up to their initial promise has effectively extinguished that guiding light. Now focus has turned to social and emotional learning (SEL). In a…

Despite the widespread education reform discourses attempting to alleviate high-stakes examination pressure and narrowly test-driven education systems in East Asia, none have been as systematic and drastic as the Free Year Program (FYP) recently implemented in South Korea. The FYP provides middle school students with a year-long reprieve from…

Many successful piloted programs fail when scaled up to a national level. In Kenya, which has a long history of particularly ineffective implementation after successful pilot programs, the Tusome national literacy program--which receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development--is a national-level scale-up of previous…

The single most important factor in improving and sustaining a country's economy is its education system. In the past 3 decades, multinational corporations have invested in Costa Rica, which has focused on improving its education system, particularly to develop students who will acquire 21st-century skills and foundational knowledge in science,…

This overview identifies some common features of macro-level language planning and briefly summarises the changing approaches to the analysis of macro-planning in the field. It previews six cases of language-in-education planning in response to linguistic diversity presented by the contributors to this issue. The cases show how macro-planning can…

Given the need for major reform of the higher education programmes in Syria, and answering the voices that question the role of European Union (EU) in assisting the development of the higher education sector, this study presents an analysis of the contribution of (TEMPUS) Programme in modernising higher education in Syria. The study compares the…

Launched in 2003, "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count" is a multiyear national initiative designed to improve educational outcomes for community college students, particularly students of color and low-income students. Supported by Lumina Foundation for Education and other funders, the initiative has grown to include 98…

The educational programs of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) represented the first organized attempt by the Chinese government to restructure and align the educational system with the national economy. The educational policies of the GLF ultimately foundered because of patterned inertia within the educational system.(Author)

From 1973 to 1978, the Rand Corporation conducted a national study of local public schools' responses to various federal programs requiring educational change--Title III of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Title VII of the ESEA, programs financed by the 1968 Vocational Education Act, and the Right-to-Read program. This paper…

This article discusses some of the Government's current agendas for schools that appear to be in direct conflict with each other. For example, the positive effects of Every Child Matters, personalised learning, inclusion and collaboration are seen as complementary, but their implementation is viewed as being held back by the current regime of…

To provide access to and retain both students of color and low-income students, community colleges must change to create environments in which all students can succeed. Change strategies must focus on the core mission of the institution and rely on data regarding the experiences of students at the institution. When student data are used to inform…

Starting from the debate over the utility, or possibility, of educational planning, the author covers its theory and practice, concepts of educational reform, and philosophies of education. He first summarizes various critics' arguments against educational planning and then, using evidence from 95 nations' educational plans and 12 UNESCO regional…

This paper presents findings of a study that examined the effectiveness of the guidance program used by change agents in the Dutch School Improvement Project (NSIP) on program implementation. Sixteen schools composed the experimental group and 13 made up the control group. The experimental variable was the guidance strategy of the NSIP. The two…

This report is about information technology in the classroom and is designed to provide information to anyone who might be involved in the planning and implementation of a national program for the introduction of computers into schools. The first of two sections of the report examines the background against which policy decisions can be made,…