Implementing change is always difficult. It is even more difficult when change is not a priority for anyone else, individuals do not have the authority to tell people to "just do it" and they do not have the resources to "do it themselves". These are some of the challenges the Records Management Section at the University of…

The paper examines the implementation of an external written curriculum in the classroom. The study is based on observation of and interviews with 26 Israeli Bible teachers who followed a formal curriculum and used a teachers' guide. The study identified three types of curriculum narrative: the frame narrative, the task narrative, and the…

Value-added indicators are now a central part of school accountability in England, and value-added information is routinely used in school improvement at both the national and the local levels. This article describes the value-added models that are being used in the academic year 2007-8 by schools, parents, school inspectors, and other…

India's rich multilingual, multicultural society creates a complex challenge to the Government as it attempts to address the educational needs of its tribal communities. Although access to schools has increased and enrolment rates are improving, the dropout rates are still alarmingly high and achievement levels are low compared to their non-tribal…

This paper reports our implementation and evaluation of a wireless handheld learning environment used to support a clinical nursing practicum course. The learning environment was designed so that nursing students could use handhelds for recording information, organizing ideas, assessing patients, and also for interaction and collaboration with…

Pastoral care in schools has traditionally been associated with notions of help, advice, values development, and children's moral welfare. In the past it has been viewed predominantly as a separate set of extra-curricula activities offered to students by school staff with particular support roles, or "pastors" from affiliated church or…

This article is based on a collaborative evaluation of the implementation of a Libraries and Knowledge Centre (LKC) model in three remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. It outlines the context in which LKC services are being implemented, provides a brief description of the LKC model, and discusses some strengths of the model to…

This paper outlines a model for giving meaning to student achievement by referencing assessment to student learning or standards. This effectively shifts the focus in assessment from notions of rank ordering students (comparing their performance purely to each other) to those of monitoring growth or progress and measurement. More specifically it…

The University of Wollongong has been strategically exploring ePortfolios since 2002. Building on lessons learnt from student trials across two different disciplines in 2002/3 and 2006, the project team is on the verge of implementing a university wide ePortfolio tool customisable for all students across all faculties. This paper describes the…

Reforms in education have repeatedly been confronted with the challenge of policy implementation. Recent initiatives in mathematics are no exception. Pressing for fundamental and complex changes to pedagogy, the initiatives demand much from teachers. In this article, we propose a conceptual frame for understanding how teachers and schools work to…

This paper highlights program-level assessment of learning outcomes in an 8-month Faculty Certificate Program (UBC-FCP) on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). The aim of the UBC-FCP is to enhance SoTL in multidisciplinary settings. Essentially, SoTL is an approach to academic work that…

This study analyzes the social and historical reasons for higher education reforms in Central and East European universities after the collapse of communist regimes, in order to answer the central question of this study: To what extent were the national features eliminated in Central and Eastern Europe by the implementation of the 3-5-8 model and…

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the implementation process for Parenting Plus, an early intervention program in a rural, western Canadian health district. Parenting Plus, as modeled after Hawaii Healthy Start, provides strength-based paraprofessional home visitations to overburdened parents of newborns. The general inductive…

Purpose: This paper seeks to concentrate on bottom-up approaches in order to promote a European vocational education and training (VET) concept. The overall aim of this article is to demonstrate that sophisticated approaches still have a chance of becoming common practice in European countries. Design/methodology/approach: The centre of the…

The main aim of the Bridging the Gap project was to encourage Indigenous families to use a home book-reading program to minimise the disadvantage often experienced by their children when learning to read. The project was implemented in Western Sydney by Aboriginal Education Assistants (AEAs) from the Indigenous Catholic Education Unit within the…