Designers have a limited selection of K-12 online course creation standards to choose from that are not blocked behind proprietary or pay walls. For numerous institutions and states, the use of the iNACOL "National Standards for Quality Online Courses" is becoming a widely used resource. This article presents the final phase in a…

The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-279) created the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) to serve as an advisory board to the Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education. Among the duties listed in the Education Sciences Reform Act, the Board is required to submit the…

ACECQA has published the second in its series of occasional papers, analysing one of the most challenging quality areas -- Children's Health and Safety. Quality Area 2 addresses one of the primary objectives of the National Quality Framework -- to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of children attending education and care services. The paper…

The purpose of this Decision Regulation Impact Statement (Decision RIS) is to recommend preferred options for improving the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care. The Decision RIS follows the public release of the Consultation RIS and incorporates stakeholders' views and comments received during the ten week stakeholder…

In 2011, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning released the second iteration of the "National Standards for Quality Online Courses." These standards have been used by numerous institutions and states around the country to help design and create K-12 online courses. However, there has been no reported research on the…

Using a sociological framework this article explores the emergence and possible consequences of the 2015 U.S. Department of Education's proposed federal regulatory policy on teacher education programs and alternative route providers. After describing the key features of the policy, we examine the research literature looking for evidence of the…

ACECQA [Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority] has published its fifth occasional paper analysing Quality Area 7 -- Leadership and service management. This completes the suite of occasional papers that cover the four quality areas of the National Quality Standard that are comparatively challenging. Quality Area 7 recognises…

The article examines the standardization of primary education as one of the development trends of the British school at the present moment in the context of improving its efficiency and quality. It analyses the positive results of the standard-based reforms (modernization of primary education content, improvement of younger students' outcomes,…

This study examined the association between early childhood classroom quality and preschool children's social skills and emotional problems. Teachers completed the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) and the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment-Clinical Form (DECA-C). Participants included 141 preschool children from 10…

This article provides an overview of the Education Meets Play study that will investigate early childhood educators' use of play-based learning, now mandatory under the "National Quality Standard". By building on what can be gleaned about educators' approaches to play-based learning prior to the implementation of the "Early Years…

Cross-border higher education has created a need to build capacity -- particularly in the internationalization dimension -- for national quality assurance agencies to evaluate cross-border education provided by foreign educational providers, or jointly by local and foreign institutions. This is quickly becoming a key issue in the Asia-Pacific…

This report is the second installment (Wave II) of the longitudinal study examining the perceptions and experiences of services under the National Quality Framework (NQF) with respect to their level of regulatory burden. The Wave II perception survey was conducted in February and March 2014. The findings in this report are divided into two themes:…

While acknowledging that a system of vocational qualifications might be perceived as having any number of possible purposes, this paper identifies three primary functions that any vocational qualification must fulfil by dint of being a vocational qualification. It is argued that current arrangements are unable to fulfil these essential functions…

This paper uses a trial audit of history programs undertaken in 2011-­2012 to explore issues surrounding the attainment of Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) in an emerging Australian national standards environment for the discipline of history. The audit sought to ascertain whether an accreditation process managed by the discipline under the…

The study provides an insight into student perspectives on quality in higher education, using Harvey and Green conceptualizations as the point of departure, and exploring the linkages between the views on quality, the developments of the Bologna Process and related national reforms, as well as students' motivation for and expectations from higher…