This report presents the findings from a rapid literature review of the barriers to school attendance and reasons for student absence. It was commissioned by the Australian Education Research Organisation as part of its work on work on school attendance for Education Ministers. Whether a child attends school or is absent is underpinned by a wide…

As schools, districts, and the overall education system are complex entities, both the approaches taken to improve them and the methods used to study them must be similarly complex. Simple solutions imposed with no regard for schools' or districts' unique contexts hold little promise, while seemingly insignificant differences between those…

Migration-based language pluralism and globalized identity conflicts pose challenges for educational research and linguistic anthropology, in particular, how we think about education and social inequality. This article proposes new conceptual tools, drawn from linguistic anthropology as well as world systems theory, for analyzing the role of…

This essay brings together two lines of inquiry. Firstly, I revisit research on futures in education conducted during the 1980s and re-examine some of the propositions and principles that this research generated about "the future" as an object of inquiry in education. Secondly, I argue that the language of complexity invites us to…

This paper suggests that the traditional role of school counselor and that of the organizational specialist could be made to fit into a single job description that should be the emerging role of the counselor of tomorrow. Rather than viewing the role of organizational specialist as still another expectation, the authors see it as a natural fit…

This is one of a series of reports based on an ongoing reality test of systemic evaluation for instructional decision making. This feasibility study is being carried out by the Center for the Study of Evaluation with the Laboratory in School and Community Relations at a suburban Los Angeles high school (called Site A). Viewing a school as a…

To shift educational research's focus from the rigorous study of individuals to whole learning environments, a systemic view of the classroom is proposed, with a list of seven generic components of the classroom environment. L. Guttman's Small Space Analysis is used, and a science teaching project illustrates the discussion. (SLD)

We propose a multidimensional model that can be used to formulate a research agenda that aims to explore how innovations in teaching and instruction influence the science of learning within educational contexts. This model depicts the complexity of relationships between variables within: classrooms, the total school program, and inside and outside…

Beginning with a capsule history of United States education reform efforts and an examination of the American "myth" of the apolitical nature of education, this paper explores the political bases of education policy. Reviewing the literature on educational politics with a particular concern for recent curriculum reform efforts at the state level,…

Existing research on vocational education and training (VET) for entry-level employment in Australia was reviewed. According to the review, research on entry-level VET has enhanced knowledge related to the following: competence requiring knowledge and understanding as well as performance; graded standards-based assessment; problems of policy…

This book contains 13 papers by prominent scholars in the area of training and development. The following papers are included: "Foreword" (Edwin A. Fleishman); "Preface" (J. Kevin Ford); "Advances in Training Research and Practice: An Historical Perspective" (J. Kevin Ford); "Training Design, Cognitive Theory,…

This book contains 15 papers: "Introduction" (Madhu Singh); "Adult Learning and the Transformation of Work" (Paul Belanger); "Future of Work and Adult Learning" (Ettore Gelpi); "The Obligation of Education in the Face of Globalisation" (Nicole Arnaud); "Lifelong Learning and Vocational Education and…

This document contains 41 papers and 11 poster session presentations from a conference on research-to-practice in adult, continuing, and community education. The following are among the papers included: "Learning in a Multicultural Environment" (Mansur Abdullah, Cory Eisenberg, Willard C. Hall Jr., Pauline Valvo); "How to Engage in…