In this paper we connect the concepts of distributed leadership (DL) and educational change by asking: How do different practices of DL relate to change in schools? We answer this question by studying 12 schools in Switzerland during the implementation of the "Education for Sustainable Development" concept. In an embedded mixed methods…

Change and innovation in education require carefully thought-through procedures as well as time, and benefit both from exchanges of expertise between contexts and from quality assurance (QA) processes. A key document that stimulates change in planning, teaching, and assessment is the Council of Europe's (2001) Common European Framework of…

In the context of the Bologna reform, the Environmental Sciences programme at ETH Zurich was transformed from a Diploma to a Master's degree programme. In a comparative secondary analysis of graduate surveys of the last homogeneous cohort of Diploma graduates (N = 85) and two Master's cohorts after the reform (N = 108), this study investigated the…

This report aims to provide insight into the realities faced by higher education academic staff at a time of fast-moving change and increasing societal demand. Fluctuating student numbers, new funding and steering mechanisms are among the features of today's European higher education landscape, but not enough is known about how academic staff are…

The issue of plurilingual approach usage to the study of foreign languages has been made actual on case study of Swiss universities. Basic concepts of English philologists' formation at Swiss universities have been determined. These components have been analyzed with relation to their relevance to the prospective philologist in English Linguistics…

This research by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for Sutton Trust examined the English education system and its apprenticeship programs. BCG reported that the UK is failing nearly half its young people by providing inadequate vocational opportunities. BSG presents key findings that include: (1) more than four in ten people have only low level…

One common way of conceptualising recent changes in university governance is by stating that the universities are being pushed towards a market-like setting where the uniqueness of each university's strategy and capacity for introducing organizational change is seen as necessary to improve the functioning of the university. We argue that the…

In this article, the author discusses the problems in teacher training. He addresses three themes of innovation that could be interpreted as a questioning of the very existence of teacher training: (1) What is its mission, that is, what is it supposed to be doing?; (2) What is the appropriate structure for this?; and (3) In turn, what is the…

Amartya Sen defined development as the creation of capabilities or capacities. One of the crucial capacities is basic education. With no access to writing, reading and numeracy, people are unable to fight against poverty and to build their lives in the current global environment. In this perspective, the right to education cannot be conceived only…

This publication presents proceedings from a 1999 conference on higher education reform and quality that involved six countries: China, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States. The first section, "Report of the Six-Nation Higher Education Project," presents "Summary of the Progress of the Higher Education…