This article examines the key role that adult learning and education (ALE) has played and continues to play in addressing the challenges faced by critical engagement with identities and crossing borders in the Mediterranean region. Despite the great cultural, economic and educational diversities characterising the region, the author explores…

This article makes contributions to questions of why international transfers of programmes do not lead to the outcomes that nations engaging in them expect to gain. Using Bahrain as an example, it is argued that tensions arising from policy borrowing are rooted in the complexities of the political incoherence between the new teaching policies, the…

Background: Scholars widely acknowledge that politics help explain why policies are adopted and how they play out in states, districts, and schools. To date, political analyses of education reform tend to isolate a particular policy and examine the politics of its adoption or implementation, but pay less attention to the effects of the politics of…

Historically power to govern public schools has been delegated to local school boards. However, this arrangement of power has been shifting over the past half century and increasingly, local school boards are targeted as ineffective and antiquated. Teach For America (TFA), typically examined for its placement of teachers, also seeks to develop…

Scholars have recently explored the relationship between local democracy and education from two distinct perspectives. The first views local democracy as inherently good and offers suggestions for deepening the practice of democracy. The second perspective questions the merits of local democratic control of schools. Contributors to this…

This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for "good governance" as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to…

This study analyzes and describes the links between the curriculum policies of one urban school district in the US and an intervention by the economics firm Standard & Poor's (S&P). It characterizes the languages and values introduced to the district leadership by S&P as ideologically neoliberal. This school-level case study that makes…

Determining the proper role of State and local government and coordinating the efforts of government agencies at all levels are the top concerns of State-level education decisionmakers, including governors, legislators, and educators. A poll of Education of the States (ECS) commissioners indicates that issues of coordination and governance…

A 1994 review of international policy research on accountability in education indicates that there is widespread concern over policy content, processes, and consequences. Current purposes tend to be polarized by a simplistic dualism--hyperindividualism versus communitarianism. Policies and practices often exhibit neocentralist assumptions. This…

The best response to this period of retrenchment and lack of support for education is more aggressive political activity at the state and local levels. The key to success is building coalitions among educational interest groups and potential allies in other services. Although the federal government greatly expanded its support of education in the…

Using Santa Barbara, California, as a case study, the relations among the election of school board members, community educational priorities, and the accomodation of social services to public demand are examined. Given enough time, it is asserted, voters' democratic control of school policy is visibly exercised. (KH)