In a modern society, the schools have become very important entities because they form a social institution, which interests many people and involves the role of various interest groups and stakeholders in the society. The community where a school resides and the parents of children of those who go to that school will be proud if their school if…

Meeting today's challenges in education requires more than adopting new standards. We must ask ourselves if our schools are intellectual communities, places where students are challenged to become the creative, collaborative, questioning thinkers we need them to be.

The challenge of low performing schools continues to rear its ugly head in many countries, including South Africa. The responses to low performance differ from country to country, but none of these have included the enhancement of collective teacher efficacy in their repertoire. Research shows that collective teacher efficacy is positively related…

The purpose of the present article is to report on a large-scale investigation of six school districts' implementation of an initiative aimed at reducing dropout rates by improving reading achievement in the middle grades. Data for the Middle School Intervention Project (MSIP) were collected in 25 middle schools across the state of Oregon. We…

The paper we present here is part of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), which is designed to analyse the characteristic traits of successful leadership in different contexts and countries [Day, C., and K. Leithwood. 2007. "Successful School Leadership in Times of Change." Dordrecht: Springer-Kluwer; Day,…

Although research on teacher collaboration has proliferated in the last few decades, scant attention has been paid to the development of teacher collaboration in school contexts. Informed by the perspective of complexity theory, this study investigates the complex process of teacher collaboration through qualitative interviews in an English…

I estimate achievement effects of education public-private partnerships (PPPs) in 17 countries on the 2009 PISA assessment. Enrollment in PPP schools is tied to student wealth and prior academic ability. PPP students outperform their public peers on half of all outcomes. After accounting for selection, the PPP performance advantage remains on…

This article analyses theorising of constructivism, and discusses various approaches to constructivist pedagogy in schools. There is a consensus in recent research that teachers use constructivist pedagogy to improve learning. It is argued that the effectiveness of constructivist pedagogy is dependent on the quality of teachers, students'…

There has been extensive research and commentary blaming schools for the achievement disparity that exists among its students. Attempts to solve this issue have focused primarily on instruction and school tasks. Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider (2002) found social trust as a major attribute to school effectiveness. Their 1997 study of Chicago's…

To find out how organizations turn failure into success, Andrew Hargreaves and his colleagues studied more than 15 business, sports, and education organizations. They found that the secret to these organizations' success came down to just two words: uplifting leadership. Uplifting leadership, write Hargreaves and Boyle in this article, raises the…

Aspiration has come to play a central role in the British government's approach to educational underachievement. This article revisits research conducted in the 1970s by Paul Corrigan and Paul Willis to examine the impact of neo-liberalism on the school life of young teenagers. The behaviours of working-class children as described by Corrigan and…

This study sought to discover how one high school principal sustains a context for continued improvement through PLCs using case study methodology. Schools comprised of PLCs allow educators to grapple with the unique needs of their students in their specific contexts. The problem is that there is limited literature and research to indicate how…

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the phenomenon of corporate universities from the perspective of the evaluation of their performance. Corporate universities have a hybrid nature that can be referred to both as a business unit and as a higher education institution. Having reviewed the literature on corporate universities and performance…

The charter-school sector in the United States has grown steadily since the first charter school opened in 1992 and nearly 7,000 charter schools currently serve nearly 3 million students. Research suggests that the average charter school performs about the same as nearby traditional public schools, but there is great variation in the effects of…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), a set of US higher education institutions historically tasked with educating African-American students, receive both state and federal funding. However, state governments often assert operational control through the political process, potentially influencing how key resources are used. Do these…