Throughout the last 30 years, many European countries have 'modernized' their governance of education. For the Central European school systems of Austria and the German Bundesländer it has been claimed that this 'modernization' was characterised by a sequence of reform 'waves' which culminated in introducing 'evidence-based governance' models…

This Reflection Guide summarizes the findings of a Carnegie Foundation project to understand how executive leaders in education transform their organizations to be capable of producing new levels of system performance through the use of improvement science principles. Described here are the key dispositions, core practices, and levers of…

This study analyses variances among four demographic characteristics -- age, gender, continent, and program of study on international students' perception of a Post-1992 UK university's registration process. Analysis was done with respect to six structured survey questions (dependent variables), which serve as dimensions for measuring students'…

This paper reviews one of the policies which have been removed from implementation as a management approach (Total Quality Approach) in education. The main argument is that barrowing policies from abroad without considering to what extend the characteristics of the existing system would suit to the intended approach or to what extend the major…

A crucial factor for the success of quality management is support from academic staff. However, previous research indicates 'academic resistance' to quality management. This article analyses the present state of academic resistance in Finnish universities, the reasons behind it and quality managers' strategies to handle it. The data come from…

A globalized reform of quality management for the educational system in Romania is tolerated today. A careful analysis and critical evaluation of the literature suggests a big question as to how reasonable, honest and sustainable this system is. A series of studies show that the reality of education in Romania is facing the need for an innovative…

Purpose: Primary and secondary education (P&SE) is fundamentally important for achieving a high-quality education system. P&SE delivers more extensive social returns than higher education and is perhaps the most important locus where core values are established and the foundation for educational super-systems. The purpose of this paper is…

This chapter describes a model for continuous improvement that guides the work of the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, or NCSU. NCSU is a research and development center funded by the Institute for Education Sciences, the research arm of the United States Department of Education. At the core of the Center's work is an innovative…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the accumulated body of research on Lean in higher education, draw conclusions to help guide successful Lean implementations and propose future research directions to establish a rich base of knowledge that informs both practice and research. Design/methodology/approach This literature review…

"If I've learned anything from the Visible Learning research," writes noted researcher John Hattie, "it's that almost everything in education works. The key question is not, What works? but, Is it working sufficiently above the average of all possible influences? Research has shown above-average effects for leaders who…

This paper describes the process employed by the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering programme at Kuwait University to continuously improve the programme. Using a continuous improvement framework, the paper demonstrates how various qualitative and quantitative analyses methods, such as hypothesis testing and control charts, have been…

Teacher educators at one institution of higher education collaborated to reculture systems for a focus on continuous improvement even within mounting accountability pressures. A framework of social network theory allowed for themes to develop around layered interactions of faculty, processes, and professional capital. Findings focused on people,…

Purpose: Reflecting the Mauritian government's "quality" agenda and its focus on school leadership, this paper reports the findings of research exploring Mauritian principals' views about the use of total quality management (TQM) for school improvement. While aspects of this research have been reported elsewhere, the purpose of this…

California's new accountability system originated in the radical decentralization of power and authority from Sacramento to local schools and their communities brought about by the Legislature's adoption of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013. Under California's previous accountability policies and the federal "No Child Left…

This article explores the relationship between research on educational change, the Baldrige continuous improvement framework, and Schlechty's (2002) WOW school standards articulated in "Working on the Work". Each of Schlechty's standards are examined and examples from practicing educators who have been trained in continuous improvement…