This paper explores school leaders' and teachers' ideas about drivers of improvement at local level in the decentralised Swedish school system. An institutional perspective is applied to investigate how institutional logics at macro level are played out at micro level in improvement processes. The paper draws on a three-year collaborative research…

There is a growing emphasis on accountability in the management of preschool education across the world. It has become common practice in many countries to evaluate kindergartens to monitor and ensure their quality. The Chinese government has been implementing the policy of evaluating kindergartens for 30 years. It mainly involves assessing…

This longitudinal quantitative study investigated teachers' development of self-efficacy and teaching practices relating to education for sustainable development (ESD) in four compulsory schools in a Swedish municipality. The teachers participated in a professional development program over three school years designed to support them in…

Internationalisation facilitated through 'sister' relationships establishes transnational, cooperative partnerships and cultural exchanges between institutions within and between geographic locations. This case study describes the long-term sister city internationalisation partnership between two sister universities, one Chinese and one American,…

Discursively learning outcomes have been embedded within an education-policy context characterised by a shift from teaching to learning. In the dominant education policy discourse, learning outcomes have come to play an important role in education whose emphasis is more on product than process, which by its critics have been characterised as…

Current kindergarten parents' attitudes toward and beliefs about children's art education in majority cities and counties of Taiwan were investigated. A review of the literature was conducted to identify several possible influences on parents' interpretation/ assessment of children's art education. Then, the researcher developed and distributed a…

The intention of this study is to examine how early childhood education (ECE) teachers can promote children's language learning and the construction of knowledge about their environment in everyday conversations. Young children primarily learn through interactions with adults and peers, with conversations representing important arenas for language…

This longitudinal study investigated the associations between the frequency of parents' reading-related activities at home and their children's reading-related skills during the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1. Longitudinal data were obtained for 1436 Finnish children (5- to 6-year-olds at baseline) and their mothers and fathers. 684 girls…

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare kindergarten and special kindergarten teachers' perceptions of their own competence in early childhood special education (ECSE) in Finnish day care. This comparison is based on the kindergarten teachers' and special kindergarten teachers' self-evaluation. Teachers evaluated their theoretical and…

At the request of the school committee of that town, this bureau made last spring a comprehensive survey of the schools of Winchester, Massachusetts, a residential suburban town near the city of Boston. The report of the findings of the committee making the survey, together with constructive criticisms and recommendations for the improvement of…