The South African Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) is currently involved with its second round of national programme reviews in the field of education. Such national reviews are designed to foster quality and equity within the broader Higher Education (HE) system as whole, through peer evaluation and public discourse processes and…

Conducting market research for out-of-school-time planning can replace assumptions with facts, give kids and parents a voice to express their needs and preferences, and help build stakeholder buy-in and support. This practical guide shows community leaders, policymakers and out-of-school-time practitioners how to use market research to make more…

In 1997, the Illinois legislature passed House Bill 542 (Public Act 90-548) which changed teacher tenure requirements to a four-year, multi-tiered system that called for the accumulation of professional development credit for all teachers. The primary purpose of this study was to examine district responses to the 1997 legislation. To what degree,…

A long-standing accountability system in Tennessee is now subject to change.

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the relative effects of processing instruction, structured input activities and explicit information on the acquisition of gender agreement in Italian adjectives. Subjects were divided into three groups: the first received processing instruction; the second group structured input only; the third…

This article describes an interactive and collaborative strategic planning process by a community college in which student retention and success became a focus of a re-accreditation endeavor. The underlying assumption of this strategic planning effort was that engaging all groups that have a stake in student retention at the beginning of the…

Using data from a qualitative case study of a statewide early childhood initiative, this article critically examines the budding relationship between one state's early childhood initiative and the corporate community. The analysis is situated within assumptions about the benefits of public--private partnerships and early childhood and childcare as…

This paper examines the varying experiences of quality amongst key stakeholders (those who have an interest in, an impact on or are users of) in faculty student administration in an Australian university and proposes a framework for understanding quality in this context. Data were obtained using a qualitative phenomenographic research approach and…

Given the extraordinary interest and growth in eLearning as a learning tool and as an industry, it is not surprising there is lively debate on quality. A research-based and tested eLearning model was used to design and evaluate an online M.Ed. course in order to study factors that influence the quality of an eLearning event. Several data…

Previous research provides evidence of grassroots academics adopting a variety of behaviours in response to quality-led change initiatives in higher education. Although administrators may seek answers to the question "when will academics learn about quality?", perhaps there is a need to address a more fundamental question: "How do…

The philosophy of Nebraska's School-based, Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System (STARS) is based on the premise that the purpose of assessment is to drive curriculum and instruction to produce student academic achievement gain. It is a locally driven system designed from the classroom up, which recognizes that improved student achievement…

This paper analyses whether the Australian Landcare movement complies with notions of "post-productivist rural governance." The paper argues that Landcare has been a vast improvement on previous approaches to the management of the countryside in Australia, and that it has managed to mobilise a large cross-section of stakeholders.…

Developed by the International Test Commission, the International Guidelines on Computer-Based and Internet-Delivered Testing are a set of guidelines specifically developed to highlight good practice issues in relation to computer/Internet tests and testing. These guidelines have been developed from an international perspective and are directed at…

Purpose: To provide a view of quality in accounting education from the perspective of a critical stakeholder group--academic accountants. The identification of this view adds to the growing discussions around quality, and how it is assured in higher education. Design/methodology/approach: Applying a framework for defining quality in higher…

This note is concerned with presenting some simple indices of group-wise relative disadvantage in the distribution of income, in terms of the distance between the group's share in total population and its share in total income. The group-wise indices are then aggregated into society-wide indices of inter-group disparity. Empirical illustrations of…