Autonomy is often discussed as a necessary condition for professionalism in any field, including the teaching profession. In the educational context, autonomy is seen to be critical for teachers to be able to synthesize their knowledge and skills and translate them into effective classroom practices in the best interest of their students. In…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the digitalization of education to be accelerated to continue the teaching-learning processes in confined populations. The irruption of this fact caused the evolution that had previously been occurring in the integration of digital technologies, and in general information and communication technologies (ICT), in…

Utilizing the theory of change, this study analyzes the extent to which the participation in cross-national learning assessments by Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa has contributed to educational policy and curriculum reforms. Data collection involved in-depth interviews with key informants and summative content analysis of policy/strategic…

This chapter surveys the status of educational systems and assessment practices across eight European countries that are part of the ASSIST-ME project. First, variations in the country's educational systems are examined to identify possible connections between systems and educational practices. Such associations are useful both for understanding…

Environmental educators exchange ideas in social networks, which may in turn impact their practices. This study uses social network analysis, surveys, correlation analysis and interviews to examine the relationship between network and practice change in three professional development programs. In the first program that used face-to-face…

This article compares and contrasts the use of mental testing and the formation of educational streaming in Denmark and Ontario during the interwar years. In this sense, the article adds nuances to the meaning of internationalism as well as contributing to our knowledge about how ideas of testing practices circulated among countries and…

This article examines global changes in tracking policies over the post-World War II period. Using a newly constructed quantitative panel data set of 139 countries from 1960 to 2010, I show that a majority of countries around the world have shifted away from sharply tracked institutions at the junior secondary level toward more formally…

Research conducted in England over the last decade has documented sustained, significant decreases in children's wellbeing. While recent changes to curriculum policy promoting children's wellbeing have been introduced, a notable feature of the discourse surrounding the promotion of children's wellbeing is that wellbeing is regarded as opposed to,…

Cross-national analyses of university curricula are rare, particularly with a focus on internationalization, commonly studied as impacting higher education through the mobility of people, programs, and campuses. By contrast, we argue that university knowledge shapes globalization by producing various sociopolitical conceptions beyond the…

School innovativeness has become a crucial criterion for the long-term success of education systems in terms of their adaptability to societal changes. We examined the relations among school innovativeness--measured by teachers' perceptions to what extent the climate at their school is open for innovation and change--and key outcomes at the…

Education privatization is a global trend that has nonetheless followed multiple trajectories. This article addresses the question of what explains this variation by demonstrating the role that political coalitions play in the re-interpretation of global privatization ideas. A political-coalitional approach helps us analyze from a long-term…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships among governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and the organization and management of instruction in US public education, with the aim of raising issues for cross-national research among countries in which the involvement of non-governmental organizations is…

To what extent does the adoption of consociational power-sharing affect the design and implementation of education reforms? This article maps this territory through rich and detailed interviews collected in Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in 2012-2013. Insights from these interviews are corroborated by…

Globally, schools continue to face ongoing reductions in budgetary allocations, increase in student numbers, performativity pressures and high stakes accountability. Like it or not, schools/ school leaders are operating in rapidly changing national educational policy contexts that are demanding more from less and a much greater contribution to…

Research provides evidence that gender, immigrant background and socio-economic characteristics present multiple disadvantaging characteristics that change their relative importance and configurations over time. When evaluating inequalities researchers tend to focus on one particular aspect and often use composite measures when evaluating…