External accountability policies have spread fast across various educational systems over the past decades. This research examines the relations of internal and external accountability with students' math achievement drawing on PISA 2012. With a sample of 44 educational systems, of which external accountability policies were identified, the…

Higher education managers are under increasing pressure from governments to reduce costs by adopting more flexible staffing practices and tensions can arise as institutions seek to sustain motivation and morale across a diversifying workforce. This paper considers how institutional management and governance practices facilitate innovative…

Findings from this investigation suggest that spirituality is a vital component for teacher and student success in high stress educational settings. The study investigated how experienced teachers of violent students maintained teacher efficacy through stress management in four schools in one state within the USA. Most educators consider working…

There has been a universal movement towards government-regulated standardisation and high-stakes assessment. In the United States, this has resulted in the No Child Left Behind Act (2001). Because of the predominant focus on high-stakes reading and writing assessments required by NCLB, teachers in the subject area of English/Language Arts (ELA)…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is the latest development in a long history of standards-based-reform in the United States. As of November 4, 2011, 46 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new curricular standards, called the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). These states and the District of Columbia are now implementing…

The U.S. charter school movement has expanded rapidly, but this growth is geographically uneven at the school district level. Focusing on Arizona--which has the least restrictive charter school law in the United States--we use district variables to determine the factors driving charter market share in 41 districts. Included in our analysis is an…

As anyone who has ever defended a thesis or been on a tenure track must know, American institutions of higher education have rigorous and finely calibrated ways of according respect to those who work in them. What they do not have enough of is respect from those beyond their gates. The author argues that the system that created the two-tiered…

High-stakes testing is one of the most controversial issues in American education. Advocates contend that these tests encourage students to work harder, provide teachers with a stronger understanding of students' strengths and weaknesses, and allow educators to target failing schools for extra help. Critics claim that they narrow and distort the…

This paper is the result of an explorative study, based on the in-depth meta-analysis of a corpus of contemporary pieces of research in which there was found clear references to veteran theatre teachers talking about their work. Following that, extracts from interviews of experienced theatre teachers were analyzed. The major aim of this study is…

As the United States prepared to enter the Second World War and during the early years of the conflict, Music Educators National Conference (MENC) focused attention on how music educators could support the war effort. The association worked with the federal government and other agencies on a number of national programs. Through its publication,…

This article considers how the private finance initiative, a contract for infrastructure, affected teachers' perceptions of efficacy, job satisfaction, and morale at an urban secondary school in the United Kingdom. Qualitative data collection techniques, including unstructured observation and semistructured personal interviews, were utilized to…

Results of a survey of almost 20,000 college faculty in 14 countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, England, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, United States) are summarized. The survey investigated faculty demography, attitudes toward teaching and learning, academic governance, national and international…

Asked about morale at their institutions, faculty from across the United States and from several foreign countries reported that morale was low. Overwork, preference for teaching rather than research, and other factors were blamed for morale problems. Suggestions for improving faculty morale are given. (PP)

Surveys of teachers in comprehensive public secondary schools in England, the United States, Japan, Singapore, and West Germany, 1986-88, identified universal elements of classroom culture and country-specific factors that enhance teacher job satisfaction. However, most teachers in all samples felt powerless and of low professional status. (SV)

This report reviews and relates to each other the major concepts and theories that differentiate and define the constructs of motivation, satisfaction, and morale. It also describes and summarizes the potentialities of instruments and methods for measuring these concepts, with the focus on those theories and instruments most likely to be usefully…