"Potemkin schools" is used as the phrase to capture what a US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) public speciality high school becomes as a result of its institutional branding. By way of an examination of the efforts of one teacher drawn into school branding through his "inquiry-based reform" of an Advanced Chemistry course,…

There is a tendency in Western countries to view school-centered innovation (SCI) as the new panacea for the problems of curriculum change. To investigate the potential and limitations of SCI in developing countries, a case study of the Secondary Schools Community Extension Project in Papua New Guinea was conducted. (RM)

School change is examined using the experiences of local educational change projects in Sweden. Specifically discussed are Swedish educational development centers that encourage experiments directly involving teachers and the SSK experiment in Uppsala designed to give teachers, parents, and pupils a greater say and more responsibility in…