This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) SLO-Based Grading Makes Assessment an Integral Part of Teaching (Nagy N. Bengiamin and Christina Leimer); (2) Editor's Notes: Assessing Assessment's ROI (Trudy W. Banta); (3) Assessment Plans: A Tool for Sanity (Shannon M. Sexton); and (4) Lessons from…

Education is often seen as the key agency in international development and poverty reduction. Frequently the emphasis is on the economic and social role of education in development. This book, on the other hand, is unusual in explicitly examining the political role of education in development. In particular, it sets out the theories, evidence and…

The sectoral divide between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education in Australia is blurring as a consequence of broader social and economic pressures for a more highly skilled population, but also as a consequence of government policies designed to develop tertiary education markets and to diversify institutional types. The…

This year is designated as Thailand's "English Speaking Year" with the aim of improving the communicative competence of Thais for the upcoming integration of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2015. The consistent low-level proficiency of the Thais in the English language has led to numerous curriculum revisions and…

This article examines the uptake of "suzhi"--roughly glossed as "quality"--in China's recent curriculum reform called "suzhi jiaoyu" (Education for Quality) in the rural ethnic context of Qiandongnan. It engages with three layers of analysis. First is a brief etymological overview of "suzhi" to map out its…

This article discusses competing perspectives on the value of the General Educational Development (GED) credential. Although scholars and journalists debate the worth of the credential, urban youth continue to pursue the GED, especially as proxy for inadequate schooling. Using qualitative data from a participatory action research project, the…

This article aims to share experience from a Swedish project on the introduction and implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education with both national and international perspectives. The project, "OER--resources for learning", was part of the National Library of Sweden Open Access initiative and aimed at exploring, raising…

Lifelong learning has become a prominent fixture in educational policy in recent years in many countries around the world. In terms of teacher education, it is now widely accepted that initial teacher education is insufficient for the lifelong professional needs of teachers. From September 2012, initial teacher education in Ireland will be offered…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to re-examine the unique political economy of Germany's dual apprenticeship training model and its underlying philosophy of corporatist governance. It responds to recent arguments suggesting that Germany's collectivist skill regime is under threat, increasingly giving way to the introduction of…

Within the last decade, adult education has faced significant challenges in terms of its relevance to socio-economic development as it sought to define itself through many international conferences. In spite of these re-conceptualisations, adult education continues to be relegated to the periphery, and therefore lacks the needed funding to play a…

School leadership is an important factor in educational reform and school transformation. This article aims to examine the challenges of school leadership in Singapore through the lens of the Fourth Way. In particular, this article makes reference to three messages in the Fourth Way and examines the paradoxes and challenges faced by school leaders…

This paper critically analyses discourses of educational inclusion in England through the lens of Derridean deconstruction. Linking Derrida's thesis on writing and speech to presence and absence, the paper contends that inclusion acts as a "suppleance" to previous policies of integration. The paper suggests that, for many teachers,…

A critical step in the professionalization of the field of leadership education (Komives, 2011) and the evolution of leadership as a field of study (International Leadership Association [ILA], 2009) is the development of best practices, standards of practice, and guidelines for assessment of quality in program delivery and accomplishment of…

The current decade has seen a significant return of interest in vocational education and training (VET) amongst the international policy community. This rise in policy and programmatic interest in VET's role in development, however, stands in contrast to the state of the academic debate. Whilst there have continued to be both policy and academic…

In 2009, the South African Department of Education extended tuition fee abolition to schools serving the poorest 60% of students, increased from 40% in 2007. This policy intends to increase access to and longevity in school for the poorest households by removing fees as a barrier and replacing private revenue with increased state funds. Despite…