The point of departure for this article is the "chameleon" aspect of portfolios and the diversity of portfolio models and practices in higher education on the international arena today. Our aim is to investigate the contextual character of this diversity by using Norwegian higher education as an example and to show how macro-level…

Standards-based education (SBE) has been the dominant educational reform movement since the early 1980s, reinforced by federal and state accountability systems. This book examines the efforts of educational leaders in implementing SBE to improve student achievement in a variety of demographic contexts but with common challenges. Four stages of SBE…

For at least two decades, politicians, academics and other stakeholders have advocated cooperation across sectors, administrative layers and other institutionalised boundaries to achieve objectives of what are called "learning regions" and the "lifelong learning perspective". Boundaries between geographical, institutional and sectors are becoming…

For six years the Food Security Research Network at Lakehead University, Canada, has been engaged in an interdisciplinary theme-based service-learning initiative focusing on food security. Informed by complexity theory, the contextual fluidity partnership model brings community partners, students, and faculty into a nexus through which new…

This paper examines the collaborative relationship between principals and School Governing Bodies (SGBs), and how this impacts on the management of financial resources in public schools. In South Africa, educational trends such as decentralisation, the shift of responsibility in roles, community involvement, building of partnerships and…

In Serbia, as in the other countries of the Western Balkans and South-Eastern Europe, the most disadvantaged communities belong to the Roma minority. The present paper demonstrates the conditions of Roma preschool children in Serbia: primarily their early education, but also habitation and health in Roma settlements. The data highlight the…

Purpose: Educational leadership is key to addressing the persistent inequities in low-income urban schools, but most principals struggle to work with parents and communities around those schools to create socially just learning environments. This article describes the conditions and experiences that enabled principals to share leadership with…

This study explores the integration of two key ideas and working frameworks: a community of educational practice formed by the synergy between a natural history museum and a university department of pre-school education, which undertook participatory action research aimed at the creation of innovative museum programmes for young children. Data…

The article presents a comparative analysis of Turkish and Russian higher education sector development, focusing upon private-state partnership in the academic sphere, the role of universities in contemporary life, and their integration into present-day European structures. The author describes prospects, constructive ideas, and six strategies in…

Context-responsive teaching is defined in this project as teaching that responds to individual student needs and interests, linguistic backgrounds and family characteristics, the local community and the local natural environment. Context-responsive teaching, as defined in Chapter 1 of this dissertation, consolidates into one concept the…

Federal and state mandates to improve student achievement for all students necessitate change in the way schools operate and are run. The role of the principal has changed and requires different skills to succeed in the 21st century. However, there are few studies that focus on revealing the perspective of a principal who applied a change theory…

The specific purpose of this study was to identify the practices used by leaders of National Blue Ribbon Awarded Schools to successfully turnaround a school or to maintain proficient achievement scores within the school. The school principals answered a four part questionnaire for this study. Part 1 of the questionnaire asked about the extent to…

In an effort to bring more knowledge about "what works" to educational practitioners, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has made significant investments in developing and disseminating focused, rigorous research projects in order to increase the supply of and demand for this research in educational decision making. These efforts…

The role of the ESL teacher is that of both educator and advocate. Frequently ESL teachers work with a population that presents complex challenges to the school culture at large. The distribution of the ELL population within a school system may require the ESL teacher to fulfill responsibilities at multiple schools, thus maintaining an itinerant…

The report, which reflects the framework of the Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve Communique, is the result of a joint effort by Eurostat, Eurydice as well as by Eurostudent and has been overseen by the Bologna Follow-up Group and more specifically by a working group established by the latter. In line with the specific mission and methodology of the…