For decades, cluster initiatives and funding programmes have been used as instruments of industrial and innovation policy--addressing system failures by strengthening linkages among actors, fostering innovation, and developing more effective innovation systems. More recently, a growing segment of these initiatives are also focused on driving…

Blaming teachers and schools for perceived or actual educational failures are popular tropes for justifying educational reforms in the United States. Critical educational research implicates neoliberalism in the normalized positioning of teachers and schools as the key suspects in educational failures. This article critiques the etiology of…

This paper seeks to empirically validate a sector agonistic instrument that measures the perceived critical success factors in data governance. Twelve constructs (Leadership and Management Commitment; Leadership and Management Alignment; Executive Sponsorship; Robust Data Governance Strategy; Change Management; Training and Education; Governance…

Understanding what contributes to improving a system will help us tackle the problems in education systems that usually fail disproportionately in providing quality education for all, especially for the most disadvantage sectors of the population. This paper presents the results of a qualitative systematic literature review aimed at providing a…

Purpose: An Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) is a collaborative governance (CG) arrangement which brings together several actors in the agriculture sector forming an innovation platform (IP). This study presents findings of CG dynamics obtained from an IP. Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative study used focus group discussions, key…

At a time when higher education faces serious existential challenges, it is important for stakeholders in higher education to come together to make important decisions that are thoughtful and internally legitimate. Shared governance, a concept that is widely touted yet wildly varied in implementation, is the best path forward for decision makers.…

Several authors have underlined that processes of Europeanisation of education emerge despite the European Union's lack of formal power in this area. This article argues on the contrary that its lack of power precisely enables the EU to open up a range of possibilities for its involvement in this sector, among which the ET2020 Working Groups (WG)…

System leadership continues to be constructed largely as a desirable, even normative, evolution of educational leadership, with critiques often focusing on implementation rather than principles. This belies its increasingly recognised role in processes of disintermediation, in which the 'middle tier' comprising local government is dismantled. In…

The paper claims that the organizational character of the (German) university can be comprehended best with the aid of the concept "multiple hybrid organization." To corroborate this claim, I reconstruct two lines of argument that have dominated the discourse on the organizational nature of the German university so far. This discourse…

This report underscores that the prevailing view of community schools is "just a beginning" for their ongoing development and contribution to improving schools. We stress that defining the initiative as a "community-based effort to coordinate and integrate ... services" raises some concerns and limits their evolution. We…

Green sheds light onto the mercurial and ill-defined boundaries of institutional governance within China's unique system of higher education, a national system that remains misunderstood by scholars who continue to position it as little more than a research arm of the party/state. Through a synthesis of systems theory, complexity theory, and…

Taking a point of departure in the paradoxical fact that the increase in educational knowledge leads to an increase in uncertainty for educational organisations, this article explores how uncertainty and contingency have increasingly become an integral part of school governance. The article draws on Niklas Luhmann's theory of 'World Society' as a…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the critical realism (CR) philosophical viewpoint and how it can be applied in qualitative research. CR is a relatively new and viable philosophical paradigm proposed as an alternative to the more predominant paradigms of positivism, interpretivism and pragmatism. This paper reviews the concept, its…

This paper draws on recent research in Europe and England to discuss the politics of accountability. It is suggested that, as policies in education are increasingly focused on delivering technical-managerial accountability, that is accountability understood as evidenced in international, national, institutional and individual comparative measures…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to undertake a cross-comparative inquiry into Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) related to governance, initiatives and practices in initial teacher education (ITE) across four countries with very different contexts -- Sweden, Scotland, Canada and Australia. It provides insights into issues arising…