Peer learning has already existed for a long time, as an informal as well as a formal practice between people from the same professional area. However, peer learning systems on the macro level are relatively newer concepts. Policy learning can be fostered by various types of organised activities, ranging from peer review frameworks, which often…

Regrettably, accountability has largely come to mean suffering externally imposed consequences if results on simplistic, reductive measures of success are not met. Just as worrisome, this notion of accountability is internalized, deemed inevitable, and trivializes our understanding of moral accountability. This essay is an attempt to posit an…

Higher education policies related to quality assurance are implemented in many countries. The purposes of such policies are to ensure the provision for high-quality education, university accountability and transparency in the use of public funding and meeting the needs of the diverse stakeholders. The current Australian Higher Education Quality…

With Secretary Arne Duncan at the helm, the U.S. Department of Education is gradually--and sometimes quietly--chipping away at key parts of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act as states and districts demand more relief from the elusive goal that all students be what the law terms "proficient" in reading and math by 2014. The pressure on…

State lawmakers voted in 2009 to completely revamp Kentucky's education accountability system. That means new academic standards, new assessments, and a new baseline for student achievement--a tall order for a school that's already under enormous pressure to demonstrate gains. This article reports on how a Kentucky high school takes stock after…

Some institutions create a gift fee to pay for a campaign or to cover basic fundraising costs, and especially today, many are doing it in order to increase revenues in the wake of the recession's effect on endowments. In the best circumstances, gift fees are emblematic of a transparent, accountable development process, where donors understand that…

Standards-based science education, with its emphasis on monitoring and accountability, is rapidly becoming a key part of the globalization of science education. Standards-based testing within countries is increasingly being used to determine the effectiveness of a country's educational system, and international testing programs such as Programme…

The AAMFT Task Force on Core Competencies (Nelson et al., 2007) proposed that marriage and family therapy (MFT) educators teach and provide evidence of trainee competence beyond coursework and accrued clinical hours. This article describes the integration of a systematic client feedback protocol into an MFT-accredited program's curricula to…

The retreat of state funding for higher education and other factors has increased competition and program duplication among campuses. Subsidies of in-state student tuition has shrunk; the perception of public good investments has transformed into students paying their educational costs, for what is considered private good, by borrowing against…

In organizational behavior and management survey courses, students are likely to maximize certain career-appropriate knowledge when their classroom groups are leadered rather than leaderless. Using leadered groups facilitates the learning of the professional and managerial skills associated with formal leadership while reducing some problematic…

The paper considers the extent to which the education sector has embraced performance management and performance-related pay. It contemplates the transfer and adaptation of performance management by the public sector as an audit mechanism for improving the performance, productivity, accountability and transparency of public services. The paper…

Pressure for students to produce writing perfection in the classroom often eclipses the emphasis placed on the need for students to practice writing. Occasions for students to choose, challenge, and reflect--to actually risk risking--are too often absent from conversations among students and teachers in countless English classrooms. Tom Romano…

Research ethics approval procedures and research ethics committees (RECs) are now well-established in most Western Universities. RECs base their judgements on an ethics code that has been developed by the health and biomedical sciences research community and that is widely considered to be universally valid regardless of discipline. On the other…

The calls for more accountability in higher education, the shrinking budgets that often force larger class sizes, and the pressures to increase degree-completion rates are all raising the stakes for colleges and universities today, especially with respect to the instructional enterprise. As resources shrink, teaching and learning is becoming the…

The two chapters in this section (Basile & Gutierrez, 2011; Yendol-Hoppey & Smith, 2011) contribute to the understandings about how to maintain resources and develop accountability necessary for successful partnerships. The authors discuss important themes related to the sustainability and maintenance of professional development schools, including…