This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explores…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise, description and basic statistics about minority language education in a specific region of Europe. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements, and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects, such as the…

Research in education, and in educational leadership and management, has been heavily criticized in the UK for lack of quality and relevance. The criticism has led to a number of initiatives intended to ameliorate the situation, of which this special issue focusing on methods of investigation is a part. The article briefly considers the range of…

Describes the Education Reform Act of 1988 as the most important and far-reaching legislative initiative in England and Wales since 1944. Presents the Education Reform Act Research Network, a voluntary body set up to establish ways of helping academics investigating the act to learn more about one another's work as well as disseminate their…

This document is a collection of articles about educational developments in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland during the period 1982-1987. The topics covered include corporal punishment, the examination system, curriculum revisions in mathematics and science, Scottish education issues, teacher education and training, technical…

In a world conditioned by what Margaret Meade and others have called an underlying system of inherited inequalities, it is natural that educators in particular should try to promote at least some semblance of equality of opportunity. Because the creation of an elite of some kind seems to be a natural and unavoidable by-product of every society,…

Explores the influences of two teacher associations, the Geographical Association and the National Association of Teachers of Home Economics and Technology, on the development of a national curriculum in the United Kingdom between 1976 and 1994. Although active, the organizations were fraught with internal dissent, organizational problems, and…