Higher education reform efforts in Ecuador during the last decade have been described as a process that has radically shaped local institutions. With the government at the forefront of mandating this reform, we examined the perspectives of stakeholders in the country who have been charged with enacting policies seeking to improve higher education.…

This study explores school heads' construction and understanding of instructional leadership for inclusive secondary schools. It seeks to provide answers to the central research question: How do school heads construct and understand instructional leadership for inclusive secondary schools? The paper forms part of a larger qualitative,…

Privatisation of public education is becoming more and more common across the world. As much current research presupposes causal links between the degree of privatisation and issues of competition and student's free choice, we see a need for research on other ways of organising the presence of private providers in public education. In this…

Purpose: Using a document analysis methodology, the study analyzes official policy documents produced by the centralized Israeli Ministry of Education and by the State Comptroller responsible for reviewing the Israeli government's policies and operations. Coordination is assessed using three lenses: coordination among policy plans initiated by…

In 2018 the Flemish Government agreed to introduce citizenship education for all students in secondary schools. This is new, since Flanders does not have an elaborated tradition of citizenship education. After a presentation of the political genealogy and the content of the new educational goals, the article analyses which theoretical framework…

Preschool teachers and caregivers have a close working relationship as part of a working team to benefit the children in Swedish preschools. In 2011, a new educational reform was introduced according to which preschools became a school form in their own right within the overall educational system in Sweden. The objective of the policy was to…

'Inclusive pedagogies' have been recommended as an approach for addressing increased student diversity in the university classroom. However, to date, no research has sought to map the field of inclusive pedagogies in higher education (HE) to establish how researchers have conceptualised and investigated this phenomenon. In this systematic scoping…

There is an increasing emphasis on the importance of research having an impact on policy and practice. This can be more difficult to evidence in intellectual disability services because of the wide range of stakeholders involved. We evaluated whether an impact questionnaire covering: knowledge production, capacity building, informing policy and…

Purpose: This study aims to describe and analyze an innovative mechanism of teacher-led, system-wide professional learning that has been widely adopted since the beginning of the twenty-first century in China--the Master Teacher Studio (MTS). Design/methodology/approach: This paper drew from policy documents, published Chinese literature relating…

In an attempt to resolve some of the lingering tensions involved in understanding play as learning in practice, a group of Irish student teachers in the final years of their degree programme participated in an intervention known as 'PLAI' (Playful Learning Across Ireland). This paper reports on the impact of such an intervention on student…

With the aim of developing an assessment more appropriate for low-income countries, in 2013 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development initiated the Programme for International Student Assessment for Development (PISA-D). Designed as a one-off assessment project resulting in scores comparable to PISA, nine countries joined the…

This article examines the intercultural initiatives, programmes and strategy documents in New Zealand education to answer the following two questions: What intercultural policies and strategy documents are offered to New Zealand schools and teachers to accommodate their diverse communities? Which communities do they include and/or exclude? It…

Purpose: A systematic literature review has neglected for years in both national and international vocational educational and training (VET) policy research. Recently, scholarly interest in and the need for such a review has increased rapidly. This review introduces the application of the systematic literature review method, with a focus on…

The concept of human dignity arguably has great relevance to education as it is mentioned in several human rights and education policy documents on the national and international level, providing their moral justification. However, when the concept is discussed within philosophical research, it is often seen as consisting of two different…

The paper proposes to study side effects of accountability in education within the theoretical framework of enactment research. The potential value of this approach for the study of side effects is shown by using the example of the side effect "Dependency on Expert Judgements." Therefore, findings from the research project…