The past decade has seen increasing interest from U.S. policymakers and think tanks in looking across countries for educational reform strategies. At the same time, due to differences across content and culture, many researchers are skeptical of this practice of 'policy-borrowing.' This research examines the emergence of a new form,…

Collaborative models of teacher education have grown from the belief that through such models we can improve the quality and availability of truly inclusive opportunities for children with diverse abilities and their families. Little is known however as to the extent collaborative models are capable of influencing inclusive service delivery or in…

The pluralistic and often competing goals of myriad constituents, the changing demographics of students, the uncertainty of funding, and the growing demands for accountability from stakeholders have increased the complexity of systems which community college leaders must manage. Emerging from the recent literature on community colleges is a call…

Although systems science has emerged as a set of innovative approaches to study complex phenomena, many topically focused researchers including clinicians and scientists working in public health are somewhat befuddled by this methodology that at times appears to be radically different from analytic methods, such as statistical modeling, to which…

To better appreciate the contribution of the "paradigm of complexity" in Educational sciences, this paper proposes a framework discussing its cultural and historical roots. First, it focuses on Giambattista Vico's (1668-1744) critique of René Descartes' method (1637), contrasting Cartesian's principles (evidence, disjunction, linear…

We show how symmetries of a classical dynamical system can be described in terms of operators that act on the state space for the system. We illustrate our results by considering a number of possible symmetries that a classical dynamical system might have, and for each symmetry we give examples of dynamical systems that do and do not possess that…

In this short paper we discuss Mario Bunge's definition of system boundary. It is quickly discovered that Bunge's definition of system and system boundary are both deficient. We thus propose new definitions, which (hopefully) improve the situation. Our definition of system boundary works off the same intuition behind Bunge's.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to make evident the inadequateness of concepts and language based on industrial knowledge still used in current practices by managers to cope with problems of the post-industrial societies characterised by non-linear process of emergence and acquisition of properties. The purpose is to allow management to…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to expound the view that knowledge of a special kind, which the author terms open knowledge, has a central place in the conduct of human activities at the global level. Design/methodology/approach: The author advances the concept of open knowledge in a global context by examining key constructs in the field,…

Through an illustrative example of Together We Achieve at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois, this chapter outlines an institutional approach for improving conditions for Black men on campus.

This research was aimed to: (1) study current conditions, problems, and needs of teachers for development and learning management in the extended educational opportunities schools (EEOSs: schools where they extended fundamental education from primary level of six years to lower secondary level of nine years), in Thailand; (2) develop the system of…

This is a theoretical article to open the discussion of what an education for sustainable development is supposed to achieve and how teachers can help students to develop skills that might be needed in order to support a sustainable future. The focus in the article will be on education. As it is an article aiming to open this kind of discussion…

This study explores the interface between learner beliefs and multilingualism in the under-researched English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context of Turkey. The study investigates the underlying constructs of a modified Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) completed by 168 EFL learners in Turkey using an exploratory factor analysis…

In the Innovative Professional Development (iPD) Challenge, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in helping school districts and networks redesign their instructional support systems to better support educators in increasing student success. This Issue Focus, the second in a series, presents early reflections from MDRC's evaluation…

We examined the impact of a pedagogical strategy, ecological asset mapping, on 19 pre-service teachers' self-exploration, development of respect for others, and critical examination of social injustice. Data were analyzed from participants' ecological asset maps and essays describing the experience of completing and sharing the maps. The analysis…