This article presents two reports on the interviews with school principals in Belgium and France. The first report presents the results of interviews with 5 Flemish secondary school leaders. The purpose of the investigation was to gain an explorative insight of their use of and their remarks on the recent initiated systems to provide schools with…

Within the globalising trajectory of modernism, conservation, then environmental (EE) and now sustainability education (ESD) have each emerged as developing responses to risk produced by and in the modern state. Through adopting a long term process perspective, this paper narrates the emergence of situated learning perspectives and a developing…

To some extent, all schools operate in a market place; but the interaction with the market place may be particularly evident in the international schools sector, since many such schools are operated by foundations or private companies which charge fees. This article focuses on the distinctive market place of Shanghai, China, which has undergone…

Global trends in the new public management (NPM) of education have manifested themselves differently in different countries. Its manifestation, the significant issue that this paper addresses, is whether it has led to any changes in education in the third level sector in the Republic of Ireland in the last 10 years. This will be achieved through a…

With the UN Decade in Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) approaching, the question is "how well positioned is Australia to respond to the challenge of educating for sustainability?". The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief summary of ESD status, needs and innovations at the national level within Australia. ESD is…

The essay deals with regional disparities in the average educational expenditure of every ordinary senior secondary student, including budget funds for education, the proportion appropriated to the ordinary senior high school by the government, tuition fee per student and the proportion of tuition fees of the total educational expenditure. By…

Australia's indigenous population is made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who each have distinctly different cultures. The former can be found in cities and towns and across the vast reaches of rural and remote Australia. The latter generally inhabit the coastal islands off the northeast coast and adjacent mainland areas.…

Recent studies on student learning in higher education have paid attention to the relationships between characteristics of the learning environment and students' study orientations and study success. The purpose of the present paper is to examine these relationships in university level engineering education. The data were collected from…

The role and performance of the engineering and scientific institutions in the UK have been undergoing gradual change in response to external, State and global influences. Consequently, the institutions are having to adapt and in the process of doing so the traditional balance between learned society and qualifying association activities is now in…

The purpose of this article is to look at the experience of Bhutan in using examinations as a tool for assessing and systematically monitoring the health of the education system. The strategy in both school-based and nationwide examinations is three-fold: (1) monitoring of standards for the formally prescribed national curriculum across the…

Quality education has always been a priority for UNESCO and its Member States--a priority that was reaffirmed at the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000. In this regard, the Director-General invited Ministers of Education to participate in a Ministerial Round-Table Meeting on Quality Education on 3 and 4 October 2003, during the thirty-second…

The concept of inclusive education is a relatively new phenomenon within the Irish education system, with considerable developments in government policy only occurring since the early 1990s. These developments are aiming to advance special education provisions and legislation for individuals with disabilities and special educational needs (SEN).…

This article examines major threats to the validity of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in the context of rural schools. Although rural students and their schools made significant academic progress in the past on national and state assessments, the current goal of AYP turns out to be highly unrealistic for them unless states set far lower…

Explains that the Sultanate of Oman is the only country in the world, other than the UK, to have adopted the national vocational qualification NVQ as its national system for vocational training. Assesses the extent to which centres in Oman have been successful in implementing the NVQ, and the extent to which the NVQ has contributed towards…

Contingent faculty members spend a greater proportion of their overall time teaching, but the preliminary evidence suggests that these appointees are less accessible to students, bring less scholarly authority to their jobs, and are less integrated into the campus culture. The purpose of this chapter is to offer some reflections on the ascendancy…