After reading about the successful Finnish education system, a group of American educators traveled to Finland on an 8-day study tour of three cities to observe several schools and talk with educators there. In this reflective paper, the author describes and analyzes certain aspects of Finnish education as compared with public education in the…

This paper reviews evidence on the interplay between professional standards for teachers, the content of teacher education and educational sciences, and provides three case studies to illustrate these interactions from Estonia, Australia and Singapore. In particular, it investigates what aligning teacher education programmes to standards really…

Purpose: This paper compares citizenship education in Singapore and Australia. While discussions have been made about education and neoliberalism, few have explored the direct connections between citizenship education and neoliberalism. Approach: Though a discussion of country contexts, citizenship education policies and curriculum,…

The importance of lifelong learning has been recognized for many years and consequently many countries, disregarding their geographical location, differences in education systems and traditions, have adopted their lifelong learning policies to develop the lifelong learning system. The goal of the present comparative research is to study the…

Educational agencies are going through a difficult transition, with important consequences in terms of de-legitimacy of the social mandate historically assigned to the school. The reason for this widespread unease can be traced to the fact that today we live in a complex system. This paper arises within this problematic framework with the intent…

Portugal, like many other countries, faces obstacles regarding school-based sexuality education. This paper explores Portuguese schools' approaches to implementing sexuality education at a local level, and provides a critical analysis of potential strengths and weaknesses. Documents related to sexuality education in a convenience sample of 89…

This paper details the potential contribution of outdoor education (OE) in Singaporean education given the recent raft of national curricular reforms aimed at fostering holistic and exploratory learning opportunities. In this context, we contend that increasing recognition of the value of OE, both internationally and locally, heralds specific…

This document provides guidelines for developing competency-based pathways in Iowa districts and schools and outlines waiver requirements and procedures. Competency-based pathways provide ways to validate learning of standards that occurs outside the structure of the traditional school and offer flexibility for schools to engage students in…

Based on over twenty years of empirical and intellectual work about knowledge production in the field of educational administration, I examine the origins and development of the canon, methodologies and knowledge workers in England. I focus on the field as being primarily concerned with professional activity and how and why this was established…

This essay reviews six competing positions on U.S. school reform: a speech from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System"; Frederick Hess's "The Same Thing Over and Over"; Charles Payne's "So Much Reform, So Little Change"; Anthony Byrk and others' "Organizing School for…

This article aims to review the historical development of continuing professional development programmes (CPDPs) for teachers, as well as the policies and objectives of such programmes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from the inception of these programmes until now. Styles of CPDPs that the Education Training Centres (ETCs) offer are…

"Teachers are at the far end of educational reform." Apart from students and parents, they are often the very last to be consulted about and connected to agendas of what changes are needed in education, and of how those changes should be managed. Educational change is something that government departments, venture philanthropists,…

Charles H. Thompson is best known as the founder and the first editor-in-chief of "The Journal of Negro Education" (1932-1963). Throughout his career, Thompson sought to extend educational opportunity in ways that were "for the good of Negro education as a whole." His main concern was in educating future leaders for service in African American…

When it comes to pupils in need of special support and pupils with disabilities, Sweden's compulsory school system is sometimes considered a one-track system. This article analyses and critically discusses current policy and practices at various levels of Sweden's compulsory school system for these pupils. The analysis traces three themes at the…

The end of the Cold War ushered in a paradigmatic shift in international development discourse whereby a human rights-based approach to development was generated. This shift has stimulated the pegging of international development policy to the objectives of the human rights regime. However, in attempting to unify development and human rights…