I grew up on free school meals and now work as a school improvement adviser. In this article, I address discontinuities within my 'support and challenge' role, a role that can be constrained by educational policy enacted within a performative and panoptic culture of fear. Successive governments have concerned themselves with promoting equity…

In 2015, the governments of United Nations Member States agreed on an ambitious agenda for people, planet and prosperity. Support for the unprecedentedly ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda was obtained, however, on the condition that there would not be any accompanying enforcement or accountability…

As demonstrated through the experiences of executive administrators who lost their jobs, higher education leaders experience pain when they fail. Leaders at any stage of their life and career can process the pain of failure in constructive ways using a recovery formula built on a "half-life of pain" concept. The time it takes for a…

Intermediary organizations' (IOs) involvement in teacher education policies has grown in recent years. Apart from advocating for the introduction of alternative routes into the teaching profession, IOs have facilitated the spread of outcomes-based teacher preparation accountability. While previous studies examined the neoliberal market-based logic…

To afford school middle leaders meaningful opportunities to initiate change, we must provide them with the space and flexibility to engage with agentic and creative responses to policy and practice. Whilst we argue that the tensions identified in Bennett's seminal reviews persist, there may, nonetheless, be opportunities for school middle leaders…

Purpose: To assess the potential of a paper diary for strengthening accountability in public agricultural extension services. Therefore a paper diary called 'Diary for Agricultural Extension Officers' was developed and tested in Uganda. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative case study research approach was applied for the development and…

This phenomenological study investigated the lived experiences of how primary teachers (K-2) perceive and manage accountability pressures. Accountability pressures are the consequences of high-stakes and standardized testing. This can be overtly represented by inappropriately aligned standards or a fast-paced curriculum design to match tested…

A growing body of research distinguishes between official systems of accountability and "felt" accountability - how people feel responsible to one another across a web of complex, intersecting relationships. Research in the behavioral sciences suggests that while such feelings have a dramatic effect on results, these have been…

Despite being regarded as the great equalizer, public education's close ties with the market economy have made it the great perpetuator. High school teacher Jonathan Lancaster writes that public education has become a structure in which students become career ready, as opposed to world ready. Therefore, educators should shift the narrative away…

When engaging in community-based research, it is important to consider ethical research practices throughout the project. While current research practices require many investigators to obtain approval from an ethics review board before starting a project, more is required to ensure that ethical principles are applied once the investigations begin…

The demands placed on principals to meet the wide range of needs present within the learning community continue to expand within the context of school reform. While there is some research on the ideals of successful turnaround school reform strategies, there is a lack of research on the essential key levers it takes to reform a school and district…

College governing boards are widely held to be the keystone of institutional strategy and the prime locus of support, challenge and accountability in respect of the actions of the senior Executive. Whilst there are many normative prescriptions about the conditions and arrangements required for effective college governance, relatively little is…

The academic capitalization in higher education has aroused much public attention with its impact on every aspect of universities. To survive in the market, universities in Hong Kong have been striving to build desirable images among stakeholders in public communication. Drawing upon critical genre theory and the notion of interdiscursivity, this…

For decades, policymakers in the U.S. have leveraged accountability policy as a governing tool to lift school performance and close the achievement gap. Accountability become so widespread that it arguably became a "policy paradigm" with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002. Yet after just 13 years of…

The federal government is the lender for the current student loan system, but replacing it with a system that harnesses the advantages of a marketplace of private lending would save $212 billion over the next 10 years while also benefiting students by helping them avoid risky educational choices. Due to ongoing court cases and upcoming regulatory…