Higher education institutions are becoming increasingly accountable to stakeholders at many levels as the federal government, accrediting organizations, and the public place a stronger emphasis on student learning outcomes. Evidence of student learning that is comparable across institutions is of urgent demand. Various accountability initiatives…

Although the federal government claims otherwise, Race to the Top is not research based. Rather, its foundation is in ideology and belief-based realism. The overall effort is fundamentally antiscientific and distracts valuable and needed attention, resources, and focus from the nation's real problems of social, economic, and educational…

The primary research question addressed in this paper is: What ISLLC 2008 Standards "functions" are considered to be the most important by a national sample of school superintendents when applied to the process of principal evaluation? A Friedman Test for related samples on the Standards "functions" determined that the five most important…

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.…

Given prior research indicating that teachers can learn through their social network interactions with colleagues, it is important to understand more about the choices teachers make about whom to go to for advice. In this study, we investigated the degree to which middle school mathematics teachers change from whom they seek advice when…

This article reflects a qualitative exploratory inquiry into the lived experiences of faculty members working within a system of urban schools of education as they supported diverse teacher candidates in completing the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) during its first semesters of high-stakes implementation. Drawing upon…

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…

Background: Previous studies of mastery motivational climates within physical education have reported that providing students with opportunities to become self-directed leads to a number of positive outcomes, including skill attainment and increased perceptions of ability. Nonetheless, within all of these studies, there has been no account of the…

Oklahoma is one of 16 states electing to use an A-F letter grade as an indicator of school quality. On the surface, letter grades are an attractive policy instrument for school improvement; they are seemingly clear, simple, and easy to interpret. Evidence, however, on the use of letter grades as an instrument to rank and improve schools is scant…

This study addresses how the autonomy of teachers in higher education, in relation to education policy and reform, can be understood. By taking a narrative-in-action approach, we studied health profession teachers' activities and reasoning within their ongoing practice during one year. The findings show how the teachers created their own policies…

New public management (NPM) reforms have typically undermined teachers' autonomy, values, and status in society. This article questions whether such reforms automatically have these outcomes or whether and how possibilities for local adjustment of such reforms may prevent negative outcomes. Drawing on empirical case studies from two Danish…

Higher education is a key economic and social priority in the global arena. Many countries have sought to advance reforms aimed at increasing access, promoting greater educational quality, and ensuring financial responsibility and sustainability. Often, strategies for achieving these aims are informed by experiences elsewhere. However,…

Background: Scholars widely acknowledge that politics help explain why policies are adopted and how they play out in states, districts, and schools. To date, political analyses of education reform tend to isolate a particular policy and examine the politics of its adoption or implementation, but pay less attention to the effects of the politics of…

When school choice policies position young people to compete with one another to access public educational resources, students stand to experience these policies in not only academic, but also civic dimensions. Young people's very encounters with competitive school choice policy through their day-to-day schooling constitute a civic experience.…

Drawing on a qualitative case study of four Head Start sites, this article analyzes a number of governing patterns that have emerged and grown in the field of early childhood education and care in the United States. This article specifically highlights a government's enhanced oversight and management of Head Start programs by mandating a school…