Accountability agendas are influencing the secondary education sector in Australian schools. Analysis of student achievement, student feedback mechanisms and personal reflection are forming part of these agendas as methods of teacher evaluation. Additionally, and more recently, teacher evaluation through "peer review" is emerging as a…

Background/Context:Policy discussions in the U.S. and abroad have become increasingly studded with reference to the results of international tests like PISA. Unlike most assessments, PISA is not designed to measure whether students have mastered a particular school curriculum but rather provide a measure of students' ability to meet future…

Background/Context: Based on archival material, the following paper analyzes the political strategies of the early OECD stakeholders in transforming schooling from a cultural to a technological system and how they were in need of standardizing different existing patterns of thoughts or institutional behaviors in the member countries. The European…

Colleges and universities exist within a political arena where external demands for accountability materialize within a market-driven environment. As a result, government agencies pressure colleges and universities to rely on assessment and transparent reporting to become more market-driven assuming that the competition within the market, led by…

This commentary seeks to expand the dialogue on place-based science education presented in Katie Lynn Brkich's article, where the connections fifth grade students make between their formal earth science curriculum and their lived experiences are highlighted. The disconnect between the curriculum the students are offered and their immediate…

Mueller and Hanson report on a continuous improvement process taking place in the Papillion-La Vista School District in Papillion, Nebraska, where a proactive stance to improved learning for all students focuses directly on the human element as the change agent. The district has implemented a systemic and systematic continuous improvement process…

Relational professionalism in early childhood teaching has been described as reflecting professional ethic of care values, as well as historical maternalist views. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, early childhood teachers negotiate conflicting contexts of professionalisation and maternalism. A strategic plan for early childhood education has emphasised…

This article grapples with the relationship between curriculum theory and teacher education. Using Yeat's poem, "The Second Coming," I characterize three periods of teacher education in North America, suggesting we are now on the brink of a fourth period. My premise is that teacher education is central to a Faculty of Education.…

In this paper, we explore the work life of a scholar new to academia in her methods of leading informally. We discuss five vignettes that offer moments of learning and reflection, including reducing performance anxiety, privileging financial accountability, the rise of the virtual world, the impact of silence, and the potential for confrontation…

In this paper, we explore some of the keywords around which the practice of school inspection is ordered in England. As part of a project that explores the role of inspection in governing schooling in England, Scotland and Sweden, we have examined some of the key sources through which Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education, Children's…

Modern scholarship has struggled to come to terms with the meaning of wisdom and its significance in the field of education. This book examines the importance of pursuing wisdom in schools by turning to ancient and medieval sources for clarification concerning the nature of wisdom. Sean Steel argues that our current emphasis on the development of…

It is clear that developing a "Unified and Comprehensive System of Learning Supports" is a complex, multi-year process. The Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA has delineated the specifics nature and scope of the system and of the processes for getting from a fragmented and marginalized set of student and learning supports to a…

Doctoral advising in counselor education is an important, yet often overlooked, element of a doctoral student's experience. Half of all doctoral students that begin a doctoral program do not persist to graduation (Lovitts & Nelson, 2000), and counselor education programs may not be immune to these attrition rates. This study examines the…

Purpose: This AERI-NEPC eBrief, the fourth in a series titled "Understanding validity issues around the world", looks closely at issues surrounding the validity of test-based actions in educational accountability and school improvement contexts. The specific discussions here focus testing issues in the US. However, the general principles…

A goal for any linking or equating of two or more tests is that the linking function be invariant to the population used in conducting the linking or equating. Violations of population invariance in linking and equating jeopardize the fairness and validity of test scores, and pose particular problems for test-based accountability programs that…