This article examines the first regional governance reform in public education, created in the Omaha, Nebraska metropolitan area in 2007. The legislation creating this regional reform, which is called the Learning Community, established a regional governing body, the Learning Community Coordinating Council, consisting of an elected 21-member…

This is a case study of the implementation of state STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) policy over the period of the first 18 months of building a regional STEM partnership. Fullan's change theory is the framework used to determine progress and associated challenges with building a regional STEM educational partnership and…

This essay examines the impact of the Bologna Process on the development of short-cycle higher education in Europe, noting that the integration of short-cycle qualifications within the Qualifications Framework for the European Higher Education Area, combined with the critical place allotted to those programs in national lifelong learning…

Bologna reform eulogies and protests tend to focus on the benefits and shortcomings of the new two-tier curricula, their implementation and orientation. In this article, an assessment of the Bologna reforms is made in terms of their larger and less widely discussed systemic and institutional effects--which go far beyond the original reformers'…

The major purpose of this descriptive report is to provide an overview of the structure, capacity, and roles of educational service agencies (ESAs) across five states--Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin--in the Great Lakes region, within the context of the broader statewide systems of support for educational improvement and progress.…

In this paper, the impact of the creation of the European Area of Higher Education (EAHE) on Spanish tertiary education is analysed from the standpoint of educational improvement and academic development. First, the recent history of the HE system in Spain is summarised in order to understand the context in which this reform is taking place. Then,…

One form of Regional Educational Agency (REA) is the Educational Cooperative, which was under field development for several years by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory, Inc. (AEL) and the United States Office of Education. The program included an evaluation effort, and the general design, instrumentation, and comprehensive bibliography for that…

Through their visits and conversations with students, teachers, and administrators involved in the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) over the past decade, the people at Inverness Research Associates came to believe that ARSI served as an important leadership capacity-building effort for improving mathematics and science education in…

The mission of the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) was to build a long-term capacity that would improve the educational structures of the rural communities it served. The major strategy ARSI used to create improvement communities across Appalachia was to identify, embrace and educate individual teachers, who became ARSI Teacher…

In Kentucky, one of the six participating Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) states, the Teacher Partner concept soon gave rise to the Regional Teacher Partners (RTPs). This complementary project, known as the "Master Teacher Project," was designed after the Teacher Partner model but with one key difference. This paper…

This is the story of Barbara Shoemaker and her work as an Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) Teacher Partner in Oneida, Tennessee. It is the story of what she values and the experiences that shaped her approach to education. In particular it is about what she learned from her experience with the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative, and…

Many of the people who live in Knott County today are direct descendants of the early settlers of the region. Today the people of Knott County share an identity that is grounded in the place they and their ancestors called home. Perhaps the public endeavor in which the influence of place is most evident is education. In Knott County education has…