Considerable efforts have been made to better understand how global trends toward standards-based reforms have emerged in national education systems. Less well known, however, is the unfolding of standards-based reforms within and across federal education systems. In federal systems, national governments do not make policy unilaterally, but rather…

Educational collaborative networks (ECNs), as instruments for achieving educational goals through the integration of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), have become frequent elements of public education worldwide. Despite their contribution of additional resources to the education enterprise, the roles of philanthropic foundations in ECNs are…

Since the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), far-reaching efforts have been made to implement ESD worldwide. While ESD seems increasingly to be diffused as a social innovation related to environmental education, we still know little about how the concept is implemented through social relations and what role trust plays in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address school-NGO interactions by analyzing the power of foundations -- a specific type of third sector organization or NGO in education. Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected through a quantitative survey, qualitative interviews, official documents, reports and websites. Social network analysis…

The academic profession has been long recognized as a pivotal source of belief and identity alongside the discipline and the institution of belonging. However, the ways in which academics as a professional group organize themselves towards common objectives that possibly transcend systems, institutions and disciplines, has not been explored so…

Global learning facilitators from civil society organizations (CSOs) design and enrich educational processes in formal and non-formal educational settings. They need to be empowered through adequate training opportunities in global learning (GL) contexts. The project Facilitating Global Learning--Key Competences from Members of European CSOs (FGL)…

Although the decade for Education for Sustainable Development has been well promoted in Germany it still finds itself in a rather marginal position, both in the formal and in the informal educational sector. This is at least partly due to the status it is given in the political debate that leads to different expectations by different actors who…

This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the study abroad experience on student multicultural competence (i.e. knowledge and awareness) using the Multicultural Counselling Knowledge and Awareness Scale in two study abroad programmes during four separate yearly excursions. The first study abroad programme incorporated cultural…

Online education and in particular Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often regarded as a way to solve global educational challenges. In this article, we highlight the students' uptake of such a 'digital solution'. Presenting initial findings from a research project in Germany, we situate our investigation in the specific context of digital…

This two-year quantitative study analyzes students' experiences during migration experiential learning study-abroad programs in 2017 and 2018 in Munich, Germany. U.S. students worked with German refugee organizations to gain a more comprehensive understanding about the political, social, and cultural complexity of Europe's current migration…

Humans are born with the natural ability to gain skills through play. Children learn about social norms, roles and responsibilities, and language through curiosity-driven, playful interactions and activities. Learning through play harnesses the power of children's imagination and inspires active engagement with the material. The Center for…

In recent years, there has been growing pressure but also an increase of possibilities for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to cooperate with schools in the field of global education. However, especially in cases of more continuous forms of cooperation, difficulties in process management are noted and the intended cooperation impacts often…

This paper examines the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Germany and explores the possibilities of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for uncovering influential actors in educational policy innovation processes. From the theoretical perspective, an actor's influence is inferred from its relative position within…

In the past years there has been a growing call for (financial) transparency of developmental aid organizations. The general public, or maybe better put: the popular media, are demanding information on cost efficiency and impact of projects. Development aid needs to prove its worth, that's what it basically boils down to. Of course there is…

This article reports and reflects on the design and use of the board game KEEP COOL on climate change. The game covers and integrates central biophysical, economic, and political aspects of the issue. By using a board game as common language between students and scientists from different scientific cultures, knowledge of different disciplines can…