This report was commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) at the request of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The report was produced by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation at Lancaster University. The views expressed in the report are those of the authors. The report evaluates HEFCE-funded…

The retail industry is a huge and growing sector of the U.S. economy, accounting for about 10 percent of the nation's jobs in 2013 and projected to increase by 7 percent between 2012 and 2022. The sheer size of the industry and the number of employment opportunities it affords low-skilled workers led MDRC to explore the potential of the retail…

In the first of this four-part series of policy briefs on student data in California, we noted a disconnect in the views of state policy staff and local educators on the need for a statewide longitudinal student data system (see "About This Series"). The local educators we interviewed expressed a readiness to participate in a state data…

The Economic and Workforce Development Program (EWD) aims to support California's economy by aligning community college educational programs with workforce development needs. The program connects employers and community college educators through a network of workforce training resources and partnerships called "Doing What Matters for Jobs and…

Education estimates 430,000 new teachers will be needed by 2020. It administers three programs that may help attract and retain qualified teachers by helping them finance their education. However, little is known about the efficacy of these programs. GAO was asked to examine the TEACH Grant and two loan forgiveness programs. This report examines…

This paper undertakes a critical examination of the International Paralympic Committee's desire to use the Paralympic Games as a vehicle to empower individuals with a disability. We achieve this by applying Pierre Bourdieu's sociological concepts of habitus and capital to semi-structured interviews conducted with Paralympic stakeholders.…

In order to critique the notion of "learner voice" in vocational education and training (VET) policy, this paper draws from a project conducted by the authors on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC). The term "learner voice" is used extensively throughout NVEAC documentation to describe the…

The first student Six Sigma team (activated under a QEP Process Sub-team) evaluated the course and curriculum approval process. The goal was to streamline the process and thereby shorten process cycle time and reduce confusion about how the process works. Members of this team developed flowcharts on how the process is supposed to work (by…

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) would not be what it aimed to become without a strong emphasis on quality and quality assurance, as the latter can provide the basis for mutual trust--the prerequisite without which recognition, mobility and institutional cooperation could not function on a larger scale. The Standards and Guidelines for…

In the education sector, new public management (NPM) has crystallized in policies such as school autonomy, professionalization of school principals, standardized evaluation and teachers' accountability, and it has been widely disseminated by international organizations, such as the OECD, which enjoy a great prestige when it comes to frame…

The question of what a doctorate is has been looked at before. The author argues that the issue of "doctorateness" is a recurring debate which needs to kept alive and revisited regularly. The aim of this article is to suggest five different areas or arenas in which the question can be addressed, forming a framework which can perhaps be…

This article explores how teachers navigate and respond to the competing pressures of school change in a global policy context. In postcommunist Albania, national policies reflecting global norms for the teacher's role overshadowed complex and cultural aspects of teaching and learning and, as a result, led to gaps in implementation. On the basis…

Purpose: We compared parents' perceived-as-appropriate ages with actual-performance ages for their children engaging in selected agricultural tasks or practices, and we examined the factors associated with age discrepancy. Methods: We analyzed data from the Keokuk County Rural Health Study collected among parents of children age 17 or younger.…

Over the past several years, there has been a resurgence of interest in--and reconceptualizing of-- character education in primary and secondary schools across the United States. An important question, then, is how this new emphasis on character development at the K-12 level impacts the work of university faculty and student affairs professionals.…

This report summarizes findings from one component of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's (CPRE) evaluation of the General Electric Foundation's (GEF) "Developing Futures" ™ in Education program in Erie Public Schools (EPS). As described in the CPRE proposal and research design, the purpose was to closely analyze district…