Online professional development programmes have a long tradition in adult education. However, in early childhood education, such programmes are only just beginning to be developed. Before online professional development courses can be made inclusive, accessible and widely available to early childhood educators, they must meet a few basic…

Qualifications frameworks are tools for describing qualifications of an education or training system by classifying them into levels. Each level provides a clear description of what the holder of a qualification knows, understands and is able to do. They are important tools for making qualifications transparent and comprehensible, within and…

With the renovation of the building and the redesign of the Wien Museum's (the City Museum of Vienna) permanent exhibition, the Nazi period is now finally being told as part of the city's history after decades of neglect. The education department was thus faced with the task of including these important and multifaceted topics in our educational…

Context: Vocational education and training (VET) plays a key role in reducing early leaving from education and training, and integrating youth at risk in upper secondary education. To ensure that more young people complete upper secondary education, the OECD suggests designing interventions that address the specific needs of youth at risk such as…

During recent decades many school systems in Europe have undergone extensive changes in their governance structures. The guiding image of this 'modernisation' was an idea of evidence-based governance of schooling: 'New school inspections' have been a recurrent feature of such modernised governance systems in most countries. In this chapter the…

This paper deals with the topic of professional development programmes' impact. Concepts and ideas of action research, constructivism, and systems theory are used as a theoretical framework and are combined to describe and analyse an exemplary professional development programme in Austria. Empirical findings from both quantitative and qualitative…

This paper explores the effectiveness of networking in promoting inquiry-based science education (IBSE) through raising the self-efficacy of science teachers to take ownership of more effective ways of teaching students, supported by stakeholders (Holbrook & Rannikmae, 2010). As PROFILES project (Professional Reflection Oriented Focus on…

The TRAVORS projects, supported by the European Union's Lifelong Learning Programme, ran between 2008 and 2012. Their object was to develop training programmes for disability employment practitioners across nine countries based on proven approaches both to vocational rehabilitation and to skills training. The second of the two projects aimed to…

The financial services industry faces many demanding challenges. Firms within this industry are predominantly knowledge-based, as are most of the industry's products, processes and services. The application of knowledge management represents a clear opportunity for financial services firms to confront challenges. However, no industry specific…

This article introduces a tri-national research and development project which aims to develop indicators for the cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary educational task "education for sustainable development" (ESD). These indicators are meant to help monitor the implementation of ESD efforts in schools and institutions of higher education…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present how the Regional Centres of Expertise (RCE) Graz-Styria as well as RCEs as instruments can contribute to regional development. The RCE Graz-Styria is representing a case study of Central European RCEs. Design/methodology/approach: The paper describes the development process of RCE Graz-Styria.…

For many years now E-learning researchers have been discussing the use of laptops in educational settings. The One Laptop per Child project, (OLPC project), has been used in developing countries since the year 2002 to avoid the increase of the digital divide between those with ready access to technology and those with limited access. Austria has…

The Institute for Distance Education, founded in 1981 for interuniversity research on distance education, is discussed. Its objectives include research, program development, and coordination of other institutional efforts regarding distance education, improvement of teaching methods, integration of distance and traditional educational programs,…

This report presents innovative vocational training (VT) initiatives to improve integration of low-skilled workers into lifelong learning and the labor market. Chapter 1 describes study structure and methodology. Chapter 2 addresses the theoretical basis for observing innovations. It analyzes the definition and significance of innovation in system…

A "travelling" congress was conducted in five European cities (Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, and Vienna) to promote a mutual exchange of views between east and west. The participants stressed the growing European Community interest in current examples of cooperation with neighbors in central and eastern Europe. In addition to…