If centralising university services is regarded as operationally ineffective, why do managerialised universities continue to organise themselves this way? We investigate an occurrence of this paradox at a regional Australian university, where professional staff services were centralised for a period of 7 years. They were separated from academics…

This study investigated the mediated distributed leadership effects on student achievement through teacher job satisfaction and disciplinary climate in Turkish high schools. We employed school-, teacher-, and student-level datasets drawn from the 2018 PISA and TALIS datasets and performed a multilevel structural equation model (MSEM). The results…

Conceptions of education research as independent and serving the interests of truth have come to represent freedoms that emerge from the application of intellectual inquiry. Critiques of education research and its relevance to the enhancement of education, coupled with neoliberal market-led pragmatism, have contributed to the erosion of an…

This study aims to investigate how national education councils are organized in Turkey, shed light on their voting procedures, and examine their perceived challenges, based on data from eight participants of the 18th National Education Council. A qualitative research design was adopted and data were collected through semi-structured interviews. By…

This article discusses changes with respect to university governance structures in six comprehensive universities in Europe. We present an analytical framework on the basis of which we conduct a comparative analysis of the university governance structures along four different dimensions: (a) the internal democratic nature of the governance…

Over the past two decades Malta has been witnessing wave after wave of reforms. Whilst official documents speak of the need for more decentralised forms of governance the reality shows otherwise. Data from a series of studies involving school leaders show that they still feel that a top-down approach is being adopted leaving limited space for…

In England the balance of responsibilities between national and local government for the governance of education is changing. Relationships between schools are shifting and new structures, groups and alliances are being created in response to national policy. The article is part of a project to understand how the new local education landscapes are…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the findings from research on the relationship between leadership theory and policy reform in Malaysia. Distributed leadership is normatively preferred in the Malaysia Education Blueprint (MEB), the country's major policy reform document. The research was conducted in two dissimilar…

This paper explores the governance of school-based and early education in England under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government (2010-15). It draws on three prominent Coalition policy areas--the academies programme, the pupil premium, and free part-time early education--and focuses on changes to the role played by central government…

Recent reforms in England's education system have been justified on the grounds that other countries have pursued similar approaches to education reform. Many such policies that by-pass or otherwise diminish meso-level institutions demonstrate a commitment to the idea of devolving authority to local actors. The current reforms in England and…

Based on a comparison of school external evaluation processes in three countries (England, France and Switzerland), this article questions the possible quality turn in the governance of European educational systems. Using materials collected through qualitative methods (91 interviews, surveys of literature and observations) during a sociological…

The paper examines the results of a study of strategic plans in community colleges in Ontario, Canada between 1995 and 2005. The system was very similar to centralized systems in many jurisdictions including China. The study found that (1) the strategies of those colleges were more alike than different; (2) the strategic content of the plans as…

Based on a survey of rural school districts in Western China, this essay explores the effects of fiscal centralisation on the relationship between local governance and school district management, most particularly on how managerial power is distributed in the rural education sector. The essay also examines some of the possible effects that changes…

In Iran, community mosques have been decentralized institutions of local power. Mosque leadership was influential in the overthrow of the Shah. However, the resulting Islamic Republic dominated and used mosques as agents of social control. (SK)

Problems in the impending transfer of British polytechnics away from local control and toward centralization are discussed. Political and practical considerations in the decision to centralize are examined. (MSE)