Reforming Education


Book Description

Ambitious programs of education reform have been introduced by many governments around the world. Reforming Education is an important study of large-scale education reform in five different settings: England, New Zealand, the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Manitoba and the US state of Minnesota. The book looks at a variety of reforms covering: school choice; charter schools; increased testing of students; stricter curriculum guidelines; and local school management. Drawing from theoretical and empirical work in education, political theory, organizational theory and public administration, Reforming Education provides a clearly developed conceptual framework of analyzing reform programs. The author reviews the political origins of the reforms, the process of adoption into law, the implementation processes used to support the reforms and the results of the reforms for students, schools and communities.







Public Sector Reform


Book Description

In these times of dramatic social, economic and political change, governments around the world are questioning their roles and responsibilities in the public sector. There is a trend away from traditional public sector model and that of market ideology, but there does not yet exist a universally accepted alternative. Brendan Nolan offers a comparative analysis of public administration in several OECD countries (the UK, USA, Australia, and Scandinavia) and explores possible future directions.




Education Policy


Book Description

Presents 38 specially commissioned or previously published (1988-98) studies on recent changes in education policy throughout the world over the last quarter of the 20th century. Among the changes they explore are the move from localized and national policies toward encompassing international policies, the integration of schools into the world ofwork as demands for efficiency and performance have supplanted more traditional liberal goals of education to promote and provide the ideals of an educated elite and empowered autonomous individuals, the overt incorporation of market-led economic theories into education policy and associated management styles, and the transformation of education from a traditional welfare right to a privatized commodity. Their general themes are the definition, analysis, criticism, and research of education policy; markets and economic development; education policy and the state; race, development, and culture; and social justice, literacy, and new technologies. There is no subject index.










School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




Training for Leadership


Book Description

If the needs for training for leadership are recognized as urgent, we need to ask whether the training institutes are doing the right things and question the effectiveness of training institutions. This book calls for a serious and critical reflection on the way in which we conceptualize training for leadership in the second decade of the 21st century. The different chapters reflect the ideas, theories and practices being dominant today. The thread of the contents show that something is amiss in such training. In general it does not have the expected effects and it often does not address the needs of recipients. The implication is that training for leadership in the future has to be redefined taking into account the specific contingencies, problems and complexities, leaders – especially in developing countries – have to deal with. Leadership cannot be seen as an isolated factor. The different chapters in this book argue that training for effective leadership and good governance practices need to be combined. All ask for leadership that is less hierarchical and more interactive, collaborative, and takes also stakeholders outside the public sector seriously. This has serious implications for the question how leadership training is organized ; the different chapters of this volume address this issue from a theoretical as well as an empirical point of view : developments in theorizing about leadership, styles of public sector leadership, leadership in turbulent times and the importance of contingences on leadership in changing times.







Australia and New Zealand


Book Description

This series brings together the most significant journal articles to appear in the field of comparative politics over the past 30 years. The aim is to render readily accessible to teachers, researchers and students an extensive range of essays which, together, provide an indispensable basis for understanding both the established conceptual terrain and the new ground being broken in the rapidly changing field of comparative political analysis.