This chapter describes some of the major principles, practices, and processes involved in designing and founding a new community college dedicated to improving student outcomes by doing things differently.

This chapter describes a model for continuous improvement that guides the work of the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, or NCSU. NCSU is a research and development center funded by the Institute for Education Sciences, the research arm of the United States Department of Education. At the core of the Center's work is an innovative…

In a case study of a large Australian university the metaphor of panarchy is used as a means of describing and understanding the complex interrelationships of multi-scale institutional projects and the influences of a variety factors on the potential success of e-learning initiatives. The concept of para-analysis is introduced as a management…

Whether to adopt national standards and tests has long been a subject of lively debate in the United States. With 47 states now participating in the Common Core State Standards Initiative, and a commitment from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to allocate hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to the development of common tests, the country is…

The University of Sydney is a large, research-intensive, campus-based Australian University. Since 2004 a strategic initiative of project-based eLearning support has been creating teams of non-academic and academic staff, who have worked together to develop online resources to meet identified needs. The University's aims in continuing to provide…

This paper will detail three projects which focussed on enhancing online learning at a large Australian distance education University within a School of Business, School of Health and School of Education. Each project had special funding and took quite distinctive project management approaches, which reflect the desire to embed innovation and…

Believes that fundamental reorientation of administration toward the development of Russian regional (oblast) educational systems must occur to create a balanced system of regional administration that takes account of the specific character of Russia and its regions. Discusses the many innovations that have taken place in the oblasts (regions) of…

This book presents management strategies intended to help educational administrators bring about substantive improvements in their schools. The authors outline specific procedures and practical instruments designed to enable administrators to define districtwide or school wide programs, to organize such programs, to identify specific problems and…

Communities of Practice offer state agency personnel a promising approach for engaging stakeholder groups in collaboratively solving complex and, often, persistent problems in special education. Communities of Practice can help state agency personnel drive strategy, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop members'…

This nine-part literature review examines ways in which community college administrators are dealing with the rapidly changing social, political, and educational environment. Part I examines some of the external pressures placed on community colleges to change both policy and programs, and argues against reactive responses to these changes. Part…

Enumerated are planning principles for state boards of education to implement in long-range planning for inservice education for vocational educators. (GW)