As we work to educate our children in effective ways, supporting their efforts to make a positive difference reaps benefits for both students and society.

A key goal of global education in language teaching is to "have students 'think globally and act locally'"(Cates, 2013, p. 278) -- an idea in line with the concept of glocality. Virtual exchange -- i.e. connecting learners with different lingua-cultural backgrounds over extended periods of time via digital communication technologies (The…

This article provides an account of a range of research and development endeavours in the Western Balkans and in Kyrgystyan in which the non-positional approach to teacher leadership has been deployed in various ways. The article illuminates how, in the case of the Balkan countries, the support for teacher leadership has been successfully linked…

Buffer Schools, an emerging Thai border school policy, was first launched in 2010 to response to ASEAN initiatives. Buffer Schools aim to establish close cooperation among neighbour countries, thereby creating a sense of historical and cultural connection that can nurture unity and confraternity in the region. This paper examines the effectiveness…

How do open and distance learning institutions review and renew themselves to ensure their continued fitness for purpose? Here we report on the work of a change team in the UK Open University, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning created to examine, innovate and improve student support. The existence of the Centre for five years from…

Over the last decade, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has pursued educational reform in elementary teacher education. Because elementary teachers and teacher education are central to the reform agenda, there is a need to gain empirical evidence about how PNG teacher trainers' understandings about learning and teaching impact on their practice. The study…

The 29th in the National Center for Early Development & Learning's (NCEDL) "Spotlight" series, this report is based on a technical report available online, and summarizes findings of a study analyzing the change strategies used in the development of pre-kindergarten programs for 4-year-olds in the states of Georgia, Illinois, New…

Noting that one of the major educational policy shifts in recent years has been the establishment of state-funded prekindergarten programs, this report details a study examining how five states (Georgia, Illinois, New York, South Carolina, and Texas) managed this educational policy shift, identified the major facilitators and major barriers, and…

Among the major educational policy shifts in recent years has been the establishment of state-funded prekindergarten programs. This study extends an earlier one of the development of prekindergarten policy in five states by focusing on policy development in two additional states, California and Ohio. Potential informants in each state who were…

Contemporary school administrators play a daunting array of roles. They must be educational visionaries and change agents, instructional leaders, curriculum and assessment experts, budget analysts, facility managers, special program administrators, and community builders. New expectations for schools--that they successfully teach a broad range of…

Describes the policy changes in early childhood development in South Africa since 1994. Examines changes in Norther Province based on discussions by a group of teacher-practitioners and highlights the actions necessary to develop and implement the policies. Discusses the methodology of the change process, with particular reference to the role of…

This paper describes the role of Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) in supporting a unique urban public school network, the Boston Pilot Schools Network. By informing the educational community of its strategies, activities, and challenges, CCE hopes to contribute to the understanding of how change promoted from outside the school can affect…

School change is examined using the experiences of local educational change projects in Sweden. Specifically discussed are Swedish educational development centers that encourage experiments directly involving teachers and the SSK experiment in Uppsala designed to give teachers, parents, and pupils a greater say and more responsibility in…

Intended to encourage promising and fresh ideas in education research, the Field Initiated Studies (FIS) Program in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) supports a varied array of research projects that are proposed and justified by the applicants. Of the 29 projects described here, 12 were funded in 1990 and 17 in 1991. The…

These two articles focus on opportunity programs in higher education, the first of which notes that the state of the art of designing and delivering these programs is confused, contradictory, and yet encouraging. Positive and negative research findings and program variation contributes to the confused state of the art. Another problem concerns the…