Although washback has been widely explored by applied linguists and education researchers, little attention has been paid to teacher agency in relation to it. It is critical to understand how language teachers navigate their pedagogy and respond to the broader curricular goals at a time when schools and teachers are being governed using…

The new comparative research in this volume explores the global flow of competence-based education, curricular policy, and frameworks for instructional practice. Taking critical perspectives, the chapters trace the pathways through which educators and policy actors adopted and reshaped competence-based education as promoted by the OECD, the World…

This mixed method sequential explanatory study provided analysis of North Carolina (NC) school leaders' dispositions in eliminating opportunity gaps, outlined in NC's strategic plan. The study's quantitative phase used descriptive and correlation analysis of eight Likert subscales around four tenets of transformative leadership (Shields, 2011) and…

Background: The transition to technology-mediated remote schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic represented a drastic shift in educational technologies' function in K-12 settings. This theoretical paper sought to: (1) identify key developments in technology-use during the pandemic; (2) situate current events within the Learning Sciences' evolving…

Given the increasingly global nature of marketized school choice policies, this makes it even more crucial to investigate how the multiple scales, forms, and emphases of school choice in different countries are influenced by particular political, economic, and cultural conditions. While much of the critical research on school choice policies has…

This article examines national conservative political advocacy groups' growing interest in local politics, and analyzes how they form alliances and gain political power. Following efforts to restrict collective bargaining for Wisconsin public employees, Kenosha school board members' attempts to legally protect teachers' rights provoked concern…

After Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire (1827), a newly formed Greek state looked to retrieve its past through the teaching of a Greek national history. For much of the nineteenth century Greek schools forged common religious, linguistic, and historical ties among the Greek people through the teaching of a Greek historical past (Zervas…

Language-in-education policies are developed and implemented within contexts of great complexity. Where policies appear less than perfect on paper, this presents a valuable opportunity to examine the contextual factors that have led to their development, helping policymakers to understand the conditions under which policy change must take place.…

This article uses the qualitative case study approach to investigate the lived experience of three faculty members in higher education who identify themselves as critical pedagogues during an era of neoliberal restructuring. This research explores what the possibilities are for enacting critical pedagogies within a neoliberal climate of…

The goal of this article is to explore the various ways that superintendents have responded to accountability-based educational reform efforts such as No Child Left Behind, the factors that have influenced their responses, and the implications of these responses for current and future educational leaders. With respect to the first issue, empirical…

For more than three decades, community schools have aimed to improve education and neighborhood outcomes in low-income, urban communities of color. In this article, we position community schools as a place-based reform strategy that pushes back on top-down accountability systems. While most research on urban school reform focuses on improving…

The paper contributes to the debate on the implementation of policy reforms developing a typology for implementation based on the initial agreement on means and goals at the time of reform design. It is argued that the volume and nature of knowledge gathering and stakeholder involvement required to gain approval of a policy and avoid the…

Background: Teacher education in Scotland has developed its own trajectory for many years and this distinctiveness appears to have increased since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Teachers' pay and conditions were addressed in 2001 by the agreement "A teaching profession for the 21st century." This agreement led to a…

Occupying a crucial economic role in supporting capitalism through the supply of oil, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a very-high income, early-development stage nation with high annual economic growth levels but low levels of labour market participation by its citizens. The national higher education system was established in 1977 and offers a…

Attempts to strengthen understanding of strategies for, and constraints on, school change based on a review of some of the theoretical literature in education and more generally. Emphasizes the importance of understanding organization/environment links. Discusses implications for educational policy makers brought up by the literature review. (DSK)