The need for change in the education system is obvious and overwhelming. But each stakeholder group has its own ideas about why the system is broken and how to fix it. Competing priorities, political inertia and diminishing budgets maintain the dysfunctional status quo. This essential text examines the underlying causes behind the key challenges…

What is vocational excellence, why is it important, and how is it developed and for whom? This paper tries to: address the complexity of vocational excellence; explain the different types of centres of vocational excellence (CoVEs), which embody vocational excellence, their missions and functions; and identify good practices that work well in…

The primary obstacle to faster progress in U.S. education reform is hard to put your finger on, because it's an absence, not a presence. It is not an interest group or a manifest social problem. It is the infrastructure we never built for identifying what works. It is the organizational framework we've not yet constructed for building consensus…

This overview focuses on Europe, a linguistically diverse region and moreover home to a number of minority languages. Over the past five decades, the focus of research on bi- or multilingual education has shifted from an initial emphasis on speakers' identities and their membership of homogenous imagined communities to an interest in learners'…

Jeb Bush campaigned for governor on a clear and bracing set of education reforms in 1998. Having won office, he immediately pursued a dual-track strategy for reforming Florida's K-12 education system: standards and accountability for public schools, choice and options for parents. Florida lawmakers followed those reforms with additional measures.…

This article is mainly concerned with the capability of trainee teachers to implement learner-centred practice at one of the teacher education institutions in Malawi. The notion of learner-centred education has assumed a positive policy position for teaching and learning in both primary and secondary sectors not only in Malawi, but also in the…

This paper examines the last 2 decades of basic education reform in Chile with an emphasis on institutional and political dimensions. Chapter 1 centers on how the government has reoriented the formal and informal rules and incentives governing the behavior of teachers, parents, and administrators in an effort to produce greater system efficacy and…

Based on a local site sample of 146 school districts, this volume (the second in a series of 10) describes school improvement efforts supported by 4 different federal strategies and representative programs: interpersonal linkage of validated practices (National Diffusion Network), commercial distribution (Bureau of Education for the Handicapped…

The changing economic and social situation, the rapid expansion of technology, and the explosion of available knowledge are fundamentally altering the world economy. Today, our nation's students need not only basic skills, but higher level reasoning and communication and thinking ability, as well. In Connecticut, a committee was formed to…

Reviews major policy concerns of higher education systems in terms of their relevance to scientific research and technological development at both the national and international levels. Analyzes the significance of higher education programs to technological development focusing on content of instruction, training methods, and primary levels of…

Policies, plans, and programs for development and innovation in Egyptian education are discussed. Chapter 1 focuses on the fundamentals of general education in Egypt, examining fundamental traits of Egyptian society, local and international variables, general trends of educational development and innovation, traits and goals of future education,…

Section 20-2-250 of Georgia's Quality Basic Education (QBE) Act, passed in March, 1985, provides for three types of innovative activities: developmental projects, training center/dissemination projects, and adoption projects. This part of the Act is administered by the Georgia Department of Education under the Innovation Program. The activities…

Three case studies show innovative education programs that provide quality basic education with equity. After explaining the significance of educational innovation of democracy in Latin America and the constraints to educational development, the investigation of the three programs follows. The program of Fe y Alegria (Faith and Joy) in 12…

The tenth and final volume of this study provides a short, crisp summary of its findings for educators at all levels. Important considerations are suggested for federal and state policymakers as they support schools in their change efforts, and for school people who are committed to making effective and long-lasting improvements in their…

This study examined the characteristics of school systems and programs that have been successfully involved in change over the past 10 years and that are continuing to update services through external sources. Four models of innovation are outlined: the traditional research-development and utilization (RDU) model, the Linkage Model (Havelock…