Decision-making in educations systems has become more complex: while decentralisation has moved the locus of power to lower governance levels, the central level still is held responsible for the quality of outcomes. As a consequence, new steering strategies have emerged that tend to apply softer modes of governance as opposed to harder ones in the…

The theories and approaches of steering/monitoring a process of change within education systems have evolved over the last 20 years or so as a result of many factors such as globalisation and decentralisation, a faster pace of change, increasing expectations and demands from various stakeholders (parents, employers, teacher unions, etc.) and the…

Many policy systems and education systems have grown more complex in the last three decades. Power has moved away from central governments in different directions: upwards towards international organisations, sideways towards private institutions and non-governmental organisations and downwards towards local governments and public enterprises such…

This article details the findings from a qualitative study that explored the ways individuals who work with early childhood education (ECE) practitioners in professional development settings influenced those practitioners' understandings of early childhood policy and early childhood systems. Defined as individuals who work in the professional…

Post-Compulsory Education and Lifelong Learning across the United Kingdom brings together the perspectives of researchers, policy-makers and practitioners from across England, Wales and Scotland to produce a rich, up-to-date and highly textured source of evidence about this under-researched sector. The contributors analyse how each country's…

In an effort to analyze what management policies and technologies from other disciplines can be applied to the field of education, this report describes the development of an analytical framework and its use to explore implications for policy development. The present work seeks to synthesize the available literature on management policies and to…

Recent policy developments are changing the work of local education authorities (LEAs) in Wales requiring them to play a broader role in the community and a significant role in raising educational achievement. LEAs are obligated to set out their improvement targets in institutional plans and are called to account by external inspection, which…

As the problems encountered by big city school systems have increased, the educational establishment has come under sharp attack in some part because professional educators have unilaterally made far reaching decisions, insulated from public scrutiny. In order to voice opposition to these decisions, some community members have begun to form new…

To aid policy development for the utilization of computers in education, a panel of 10 scientists and educators formed a traveling seminar that actually inspected the state of the art of computer-assisted instruction at seven research and development centers throughout the U.S. The panel agreed on four principles. First, a systematic approach to…

This document proposes methods by which the public purposes of postsecondary vocational education may be more effectively implemented. Part 1 reviews the public purposes of public vocational education (which are postulated as: to increase individuals' satisfaction at work; to increase the access to employment of underrepresented groups; and to…

Eric abstracts on educational planning, announced by this and other clearinghouses in RIE through April 1973, are presented. This abstract compilation updates an earlier ERIC Abstract on educational planning, and it contains all those documents that deal with the theories and techniques of planning education. The key term used in compiling this…