Most investigators using single-case experimental designs use interobserver agreement (IOA) checks to enhance the credibility of the collected data, and they report the results of those assessments using percentage of agreement estimates. An alternative is to graph both observers' records of the measured behavior on the primary study graphs. Such…

Following the recent publication of "Successful science" by the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted, 2011), which is an evaluation of science education in England over a 3-year period, the author wondered at the some of the findings. There is an emphasis on scientific enquiry and why was this so?…

In the current era of accountability, tracking student achievement and success is of the utmost importance in higher education. While measuring student success may be particularly important to community colleges, it may also be especially complex in light of their multiple missions. This chapter discusses indices and other measures to gauge…

This study looks into the effects of school inspection in the context of Flemish education. Respondents in five primary case schools were interviewed before inspection, immediately after inspection and four months later (totalling 45 interviews with 15 respondents). Our results indicate that the inspection incites reflection amongst school staff…

The purpose of this research is to establish that the problems of education supervision of the class teachers working in the village and township centre in Denizli and their opinions about these problems affect their performance. 321 class teachers working in official primary schools in townships of Denizli and 272 class teachers working in…

Current research indicates that an alarming number of students are affected by cyberbullying. However, most of the empirical research has focused on psychological explanations of the phenomenon. In an explorative survey study based on the reconstruction of 2 complete school networks (N[subscript P] = 408), we expand the explanation strategies of…

This research reports upon the impact of two concurrent processes of Special Measures and academisation applied to a primary school in the north of England as a result of an unsatisfactory inspection by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). The aim of the study is to describe how the process of being placed in special measures, coupled…

In many countries the need for education systems and schools to improve and innovate has become central to the education policy of governments. School inspections are expected to play an important role in promoting such continuous improvement and to help schools and education systems more generally to consider the need for change and improvement.…

This article analyses and critically discusses how context is relevant when constructing and upholding an equivalent education for all within the neo-liberal educational regime of marketisation and accountability. At the centre of the article is a study of national school inspection reports in four municipalities in Sweden, exploring performance…

Scotland's colleges have a wide-ranging mission. They strive to meet the needs of a diverse range of stakeholders, including individual learners, local communities, regional and national bodies and the national and international economies. At an individual level, the curriculum offered in Scotland's colleges aims to enable people to develop skills…

This paper focuses on the dual dependencies apparent at the intersection of the media society and the audit society by empirically exploring and discussing the relationship between Swedish local newspaper coverage and school inspection activities. The research questions pertain to the Inspectorate's media strategy, how inspection is represented…

This volume contains selected papers submitted to the 18th Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES) held virtually in June 2020. The 18th BCES Conference theme is "Educational Reforms Worldwide." This year's book includes 38 papers written by 73 authors from 19 countries. The volume starts…

School inspections are fundamental to quality assurance and improvement in many countries. Yet the question of the validity of these inspections has not yet been comprehensively addressed. This paper proposes a systematic approach to assessing the validity of school inspections, based on Messick's multifaceted concept of validity. We apply each…

Since its inception in 1992 Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) has inspected schools under Section 9 of the Education (Schools) Act 1992; Section 10 of the School Inspections Act 1996; and Section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Pressure on England to improve its system of education has not only emerged…

The English Funding Council has announced its intention to invite tenders for the contract currently held by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), and the Australian government is promoting a Bill to curb the activities of the equivalent body, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. This article compares the two…