Six years ago the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) took the unprecedented step of launching an effort to study and scale high-quality, evidence-based academic, social, and emotional learning in eight of the largest and most complex school systems in the country: Anchorage, Austin, Chicago, Cleveland, Nashville,…

This report provides campus and system leaders with a scan of the current state of reform within the California State University (CSU), together with contextual insight into the obstacles and possibilities for broader scale adoption of coordinated, systemic change. Researchers: (1) Reviewed information on evidence-based student success strategies…

Organizational effectiveness is the main concern of all higher education institutes. Over the years there have been many different models of effectiveness along with the criteria for measuring organizational effectiveness. In this paper, four main models of organizational effectiveness namely the goal approach, the system resource approach, the…

This paper explores the relationship between society and school from the point of view of chaos theory with the purpose to understand the deficiencies in teacher education programs and to offer suggestions for their improvement. Based on the ideas of the postmodern curriculum theorist William Doll, it examines the paradigm shifts of world views…

Environmental education owes its very existence to a particular interpretation of reality. The author's purpose in this article is to examine critically the "selected fictions" on which that view of reality is based--to examine the ways in which perceptions of environmental problems and issues are "conditioned by our position in…

Purpose: Quality assurance and management is vital for the continuous improvement of the content, delivery and development of teacher education programmes. This paper seeks to explore theoretical issues and ideas in assessing the quality preparation of teachers in the Singapore context. Design/methodology/approach: An academic quality framework…

The paper presents the approach to complex training of managers and faculty staff for system modernisation of Russian engineering education. As a methodological basis of design and implementation of the faculty development programme, the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) Approach was chosen due to compliance of its concept to the purposes…

From their very beginnings, the community colleges have demonstrated a commitment to their founding principles of access, affordability, and quality. However, following February 2009, when President Obama set forth the agenda for U.S. postsecondary education to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, priority shifted…

This paper presents the experience of going to scale of "Escuela Nueva," an educational innovation that started in Colombia and has influenced educational policy in several countries around the world during the last 30 years. The paper is based on the experience of the leaders of the innovation and its expansion over time. As an…

The ability to think in terms of a system is critical to achieving common direction, alignment, and commitment in highly distributed health systems. In Canada, provincial and territorial ministries of health provide leadership on the direction of health reform while leadership to align system levels is determined by a far more distributed group of…

This study investigated a system-wide change strategy in a South African school district, which sought to build the leadership capacity of principals and district officials to improve instruction. The three-year venture was called the Leadership for Learning Programme (LLP). A distinctive feature of the LLP was that it was based on a partnership…

This case was written to help prepare building-level and central office administrators who are expected to effectively lead schools and systems in an often tumultuous world of educational accountability and reform. The intent of this case study is to allow educators to examine the impact data management has on the types of thinking required when…

System models are commonly used in tertiary education as a mechanism for describing the interacting components of educational phenomena, but have hitherto been uncritically accepted. This paper provides a critical review of existing systems models, including the 3P model defined Biggs, and outlines their conceptual challenges. A revised model…

A multiple-fatality outdoor education event in New Zealand in 2008 revealed that a 'systems approach' towards managing risks and training staff was widely considered to be normal and 'best practice'. This approach champions audit trails and economic efficiency, and one of its characteristics is the volume of paperwork required. One of the…

The Citywide Education Progress Reports evaluate how a city is doing across three goals: (1) The education system should be continuously improving; (2) All students should have access to a high-quality education; and (3) The education strategy should be rooted in the community. Across each goal, indicators are presented of system reforms and…