The Massachusetts Innovation Schools initiative authorized educators to operate with increased autonomy and flexibility. This descriptive case study examines the early experiences of teachers in one innovation school. We explore the innovations teachers leveraged to build capacity, with particular attention to how they enacted teacher leadership…

Policy tools have become widespread in education, which indicates efforts to standardise content and professional practices. However, such standardisation might be in contrast to Nordic early childhood education and care (ECEC) traditions of diversity and local variation. We therefore study the distributors and enactment of policy tools in ECEC in…

School systems are shifting towards forms of post-bureaucratic governance (PBG), implying higher levels of school autonomy, choice, and performance-based management. Under this governance approach, which combines forms of administrative and market accountability, schools face greater levels of competition and external pressure to perform. Schools…

Controversy is intensifying with the rapid spread of charter schools and their domination of the education reform agenda. As charter enrolment increases in the USA, inequities in education worsen. This article contributes to the debate on contemporary education policy by critically examining charter issues from the US literature and stakeholder…

This article intends to show that while the strong VET-labour market link has a long tradition in the Netherlands and likely maintains strong in the future, the dynamics that substantiate this link, especially in terms of institutional arrangement have seen a radical shift in the last decades. To explore the shifts we make use of Rageth and Renold…

Over the course of the twentieth century, Ontario teacher education underwent substantial transformations in terms of policy, jurisdiction and design, which shifted authority from provincially controlled normal schools to more semi-autonomous teachers' colleges and finally to faculties within university campuses. In looking at these top-level…

This paper conceptualizes intellectual dissent as a galvanizer of academic freedom in a post-totalitarian academia that is moving toward democratization. Drawing on the case of Ukraine, the analytical narrative describes difficulties in overcoming legacies in universities emerging from repressive rule that discouraged creativity, initiative, and…

In this HEPI report, Alison Wheaton presents new research into English university governance. The report sets out key findings with regard to how English university governors perceive their roles, the influences on those perceptions and the opportunities created to enhance university self-governance. Examples of good practice arising from the…

This paper reports on the findings from a multi-site case study conducted in Australia, Finland and Jamaica which explored the conditions that enabled and constrained the autonomy of school principals. Systematic data collection was carried out in the form of interviews of school principals and the data was analysed using a qualitative approach.…

Implementing internal quality assurance activities is an indispensable condition to form a quality culture in higher education institutions in Vietnam which contributes to a fundamental and comprehensive renovation of Vietnamese higher education. The purpose of this research was to assess the correlation of internal quality assurance on the…

Nowadays, the deterioration of education quality catches on global attention in both policy and practice. The main purpose of this study was to explore the influence of politics on quality management practices in the secondary education of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia. This study utilized a…

This paper explores the institutional pressures and responses associated with introducing integrated reporting into university-level accounting education in Sri Lanka. In particular, we are looking to see whether those responses lead to deep or surface learning in students. Drawing on the theory of new institutional sociology, the institutional…

This paper examines conceptions of governance and freedom embedded within a new school autonomy policy in Queensland (Australia). Drawing on interview data from case study research, it foregrounds the practices of two school leaders from a secondary school in regional Queensland. It considers how such conceptions foster an entrepreneurial…

Purpose: Education is a key institution of modern society, long recognized for its central role in the reproduction of inequities and with the potential to challenge them. Schools behave as their systems are designed. Achieving equity and excellence is not possible through attempts to fix "the school" or educators. Principles of systemic…

Since the 1990s, charter schools have spread rapidly across the nation. The replication and expansion of charter schools has become a common feature of the portfolio management model which situates the district as strategic manager of a choice-based system including traditional and charter schools. Yet, many school districts have experienced…