This paper draws on evidence from a study carried out in England to explore how schools can support one another's improvement within a policy context that emphasises competition. The findings offer some reasons to be optimistic, and are suggestive of the capacity and potential of the school system in England to "self-improve" through…

Providing an in-depth look at the processes, pitfalls, and successes that can emerge from major education reform efforts at the state level, this volume covers the full policy change cycle in the development and transformation of the Illinois principal preparation program. Offering perspectives from the major stakeholder groups involved in…

Even before the pandemic, the college/university business model was under scrutiny. With rising tuition costs outpacing living wages, and student debt burdens crippling students, institutions of higher learning were grappling with how to evolve. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced an abundance of obstacles that colleges had to face head on, but they…

This study examines the efforts of higher education systems in six states to implement large-scale changes to improve student outcomes in mathematics in community colleges and four-year colleges and universities as part of the Mathematics Pathways to Completion (MPC) project. The three-year project was launched in 2015 to help Arkansas,…

In this paper, an attempt was made to locate the role of internationalisation in African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It is argued that comprehensive international, intercultural, and global dimensions in the affairs of African tertiary institutions provide for a more nuanced and diversified higher education landscape. Through a desk…

COVID-19 disrupted face-to-face instruction across university campuses world-wide. As universities struggled, instructional design teams stepped in to assist. At one southeastern university in the US, an instructional design team, with support from instructional systems analysts, responded by creating online instruction for faculty and…

Recent European research has revealed growth in the number of administrators and professionals across different sections of universities--a long established trend in US universities. We build on this research by investigating the factors associated with variation in the proportion of administrators across 761 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)…

To improve teaching and learning outcomes, teachers and head teachers need whole-system support to build professionalism and enhance their practice. Roles at the middle tier of education systems, or those professionals working between the school and central level, offer unique capacities to facilitate collaboration, broker knowledge, scale…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of applying sustainability to the engineering curriculum at a university in China. Design/methodology/approach: A new curriculum, "ethics, involvement and sustainability," was designed and presented to engineering students from an undergraduate major in quality…

The 1960s saw rapid decentralization of authority in Catholic higher education as virtually all U.S. universities legally separated from the Church. This has raised questions about how to facilitate long-term cooperation between Catholic universities and the Church that no longer formally owns them. Around the same time, world governments were…

Schools face social, economic, cultural and technological change that makes the need to address the process of strategic reflection relevant for leaders. Compared to a traditional model of strategic planning, this article proposes a new approach in which the future emerges through the construction of a shared vision. The objective of this study is…

The objective of this article is to examine the Israeli perceptions towards the Bologna Process as well as outline its reactions to it. Specifically, the article investigates the landscape of interests among Israeli policy-makers (from both political and institutional levels) in relation to the European higher education reforms. Through interviews…

How educational leaders initiate and sustain change is often hotly debated by those inside and outside of the system. Given the many reform initiatives of the past 30 years, and the resulting changes public educators have made lurching from initiative to initiative, one must ask if public education has truly improved. The answer to why public…

The Land O' Lakes Statement set the stage for dramatic changes in the life of Catholic colleges and universities. Not least among these changes was the introduction of primarily lay-led boards of trustees. In the 50 years since the statement's publication, these institutions have faced dwindling numbers within their sponsoring religious orders, as…

Within the framework of the CaixaProinfancia programme, networks have been developed in 18 regions of Spain which promote intersectoral cooperation to combat the social and educational exclusion of children. Their emerging nature and simultaneous development have enabled a comparative study to be made of their organisation, the supporting and…