This report for Austria forms part of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Review of Policies to Improve the Effectiveness of Resource Use in Schools. The purpose of the review is to explore how school resources can be governed, distributed, utilised and managed to improve the quality, equity and efficiency of school…

School turnaround--a reform strategy that strives for quick and dramatic transformation of low-performing schools--has gained prominence in recent years. This study uses interviews and focus groups conducted with 86 teachers in 13 schools during the early stages of school turnaround in a large urban district to examine teachers' perceptions of the…

This study builds on two assumptions regarding agency in teachers' workplace learning: (1) While teachers enact school reform in daily school and classroom practice, they actively redefine the reform; (2) In this learning process, in which working and learning are integrated, teachers reinterpret and reinvent the workplace conditions in their…

According to Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun, the former Permanent Secretary for Education and Manpower, the most significant education policy in recent years in Hong Kong was undoubtedly the new academic structure commonly known as "334." As schools, universities, and the community at large seemed to accept the new academic structure in…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represent an unprecedented change in American education. As an increasingly integral part of the school accountability movement under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, responsibility for implementing CCSS rests largely with school leadership. One important factor in the success or failure of these…

This article reports on the findings of original field research carried out in the small island developing state of Fiji, in the South Pacific. A North-South research partnership was built upon previous collaboration between team members and, in so doing, pioneered the blending of Pacific and Western research approaches sensitive to a postcolonial…

In Argentina, "'inclusion" has become a central target of national and provincial educational policy since the mid-2000s. Unlike in other countries, inclusion has been associated with the transformation of upper secondary schooling into a compulsory level of education, together with the effective integration of pupils from…

For those who believe in the promise of public education, here's an antidote to the many negative messages that educators have been receiving. In doing research for her new book, "Why Teachers Teach Now" (Teachers College Press, 2014), Sonia Nieto contacted teacher educators from across the United States and asked each to nominate a…

Teachers are natural problem solvers, and they should be using this quality to their advantage when it comes to solving the systemic issues that plague Philadelphia's education system. Many of the articles in this issue have already gone into great detail about what is happening in Philadelphia. Torch Lytle has provided a summary of the recent…

Faced with escalating demand for instructional staff to serve the expanding undergraduate enrolments, many middle income countries in Southeast Asia are investing heavily in expanding their provision of graduate education. An attractive secondary benefit is that graduate programmes contribute to a local university-based research capacity that…

This study addresses how the autonomy of teachers in higher education, in relation to education policy and reform, can be understood. By taking a narrative-in-action approach, we studied health profession teachers' activities and reasoning within their ongoing practice during one year. The findings show how the teachers created their own policies…

Faculty members who led change initiatives often express frustration at the roadblocks created by other faculty members or groups. In 2009 George Kuh and Stanley Ikenberry undertook a survey of provosts for the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment to explore the state of student learning assessment. They found that "Gaining faculty…

As the educational community continues to consider the impact of the proliferation of accountability-aimed reform on students, schools, and communities, the consequences of said reforms on teachers must be included. Results of this study indicate that even distant, broad educational policies manifest in specific and profound ways in teachers'…

This policy profile on education in Austria is part of the "Education Policy Outlook" series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across OECD countries. Building on the OECD's substantial comparative and sectoral knowledge base, the series offers a comparative outlook on education policy by providing…

This article is based on a case study conducted within the National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE) that examined the identity fragmentation of academic professionals in the context of current educational and academic reforms in Russia. Seven hundred and five professors were surveyed for the study, which focused on…