The need for small human scale learning environments in which young people have the chance to learn what it means to be human, in other words to become educated, has never been more pressing. This article reviews the progress of the American small school reform movement, considers the lessons that teachers and policy makers in the UK might learn…

These excerpts from an oral history interview with the founder of the Irving B. Harris Foundation, one of the most influential early funders of the infant-family field, emphasize the importance of promoting early childhood development as a social investment and highlights the lessons from business that Harris brought to philanthropy. Harris traces…

A number of circumstances make it difficult for aspiring teachers in American Samoa to earn certification and/or advanced degrees. Young men and women who graduate from the territory's high schools have two options available to them if they plan to continue their education. They can pursue a two-year degree at the American Samoa Community College…

In this paper, the author points out that there has been a significant development of the adult education service in Ireland in recent years. However, if the service is to become part of the mainstream of Irish education, the issue of structures at all levels within the system has to be addressed. Quite frankly the present system is very…

This paper attempts to classify Hong Kong schools along four possible stages of development framed in a dynamic model of organizational learning. Factors governing the development of 67 sampled primary and secondary Hong Kong schools are compared and contrasted. Interviews with the concerned principals in diverse phases of progression further…

This article reports on the experiences of the Kimberley Thusanang Project (KTP). It proposes that the project's use of a database system as a management tool represents a significant development in the design of effective education projects in South Africa. The article describes how this system assists project management in overcoming two key…

This article deals with a particular "best practice" in Mongolia (boarding schools) that neither traveled elsewhere nor was rescued from the socialist past and adopted in the post-socialist present. The boarding schools accommodating children from nomadic herder families have experienced a long decade (1991-2003) of neglect. The boarding…

It was an important, historic phenomenon for Taiwan to separate from mainland China in 1949. Mainland China and Taiwan were originally a unified country, using the same language and same alphabet characters. Now there are still similarities in many aspects; the differences are primarily governmental. Taiwan has become more Westernized and more…

The author discusses philanthropy and educational reform from the Great Depression to the present, contrasting the views of that time to "Making It Count" (Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kelly Amis, 2001.) Although Finn and Amis presented their suggestions as advancing democracy, they thought that educational reform took place best when elite groups…

The idea of "the African university" is usually accompanied by an emphasis on Africanisation of education, and of knowledge, on changing the demographic profile of student, staff and administrative bodies, educational syllabi and curricula, and the criteria for research activity and for throughput. The idea of "Africanising"…

The purpose of this article is to explore the effects of community participation in school governance, as an element of development and humanitarian assistance programs, on social capital and civil society building. The first section describes different types of participation in education, its institutional forms, and the paradigms that support…

This paper deals with the developmental history and the current situation of special education in Korea. Special Education began in the late 1800s by the commitment of missionaries from the West. Special Education in Korea is well defined by the related laws and regulations; however, Special Education still needs lots of innovative efforts to…

Creating learning communities in low-performing districts and schools is especially daunting in an era of accountability and standards-based assessment. This article describes research that informed application of Southwest Educational Development Laboratory's Working Systemically model for increased student achievement. The article highlights 4…

The concept of "modern education" is directly connected with Rousseau's theory of education. It is often said that Rousseau "founded" modern education, or at least was its most influential predecessor. The paper argues that "modern learning" or "experimental education" was discussed within the late-17th century "quarrel of the ancients and…

Over the last 10 years, agendas for widening participation in higher education and developing discourses for developing university teaching have facilitated the emergence of frameworks elucidating accreditation of university teaching programmes. Concomitantly, university teaching programmes have been described as technicist and apolitical. This…