This occasional paper provides an overview of the development of Australia's national training system and is a key knowledge document of a wider research project "Consistency with flexibility in the Australian national training system." This research project investigates the various approaches undertaken by each of the jurisdictions to…

Building on recent discussions regarding how current national standards for physical education promote cognitive outcomes over physical outcomes, the authors explore how a new era in high-stakes testing is also contributing to an emphasis on the cognitive, over the physical. While high-stakes testing has been linked to reducing the amount of…

Since the publication of "A Nation at Risk," some scholars have argued that a national curriculum and national testing are necessary to hold school personnel accountable for student achievement and, ultimately, to raise educational standards. The idea of developing a nationwide curriculum has been widely debated in the United States,…

We reviewed the scholarship on capacities for educational leadership for the past decade of the pre-reform era (1976-1985), as well as a recent decade of the reform era (2005-2015), and compared scholarship from both decades with the current Professional Standards for Educational Leaders. We found that scholars in the past decade of the pre-reform…

This article focuses on the growing development towards new forms of '"distributed" governance within current large-scale educational reforms. The emphasis is on so-called "governance through standards" as a transformative reform complex which manifests itself in a simultaneous process of regulative destabilisation and (global)…

In this article, we will explore the current landscape of teacher education programs in general, and specifically, physical education teacher education (PETE) from the national level down to the local level. Furthermore, we will explore the impact that the elimination of undergraduate PETE programs can have on PETE doctoral programs, including the…

Following the publication of a recent report, commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and conducted by Staff and Educational Developers Association, this short paper considers the HEA UK Professional Standards Framework in the UK Higher Education Sector, in the context of recent and continuing debates about how best to support faculty…

Science classrooms--and science textbooks--are proving to be challenging spaces for education that contradicts abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) sex education. However, science educators can teach against this knowledge in a way that is critical of oppressive language. In fact, having explicit dialogue about gender identities and sexual…

Countries developing national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) would be ill-advised simply to import models from other countries but could benefit from their experiences. This article elucidates principles underpinning successful practice and distils lessons learned from setbacks. General purposes of NQFs are identified, noting implicit…

This article will juxtapose the goals and implications of two pedagogical programmes that promote education for belonging in Israel. Representing the official knowledge of the Ministry of Education, the first is the "100 Concepts in Heritage, Zionism and Democracy" curriculum. The second, which embodies the counter knowledge produced and…

This commentary article explores one of the most important philosophical problems underlying the inequality of school achievement. If the inequality of school achievement is to be adequately addressed then it must begin with causes. The widely accepted conceptual framework within which the problem and its solutions are framed is the within/beyond…

Over the past two decades regional agreements have become more significant in educational and training. This paper situates and analyses the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy and explores their influence on the integration of higher education systems in Mercosur (the Southern Common Market of…

Musical independence has always been an essential aim of musical instruction. But this objective can refer to everything from high levels of musical expertise to more student choice in the classroom. While most conceptualizations of musical independence emphasize the demonstration of knowledge and skills within particular music traditions, this…

This comparison seeks to determine if the three documents addressing information literacy skills and competence developed by professional library associations for postsecondary education in four predominantly English-speaking countries--the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand--have similar or varying conceptions of…

This article provides a critique and an addition to observations raised by Ballantine et al. in this issue. After reviewing the strengths of Ballantine et al.'s article about the need for a core in sociology, I argue that this debate has gone on long enough and needs to be reframed around areas of agreement. Three major curricular projects (that…