District and central office leaders occupy a unique space in implementing new initiatives. This article presents how a national professional learning network provides a space for district curriculum leaders to learn and grow.

In participatory cultures, the lines between producers and consumers of text are blurred, and communities emerge that are based on shared interest and peer support. Although literacy scholarship has mostly focused on youth engagement and literacy practices within online participatory cultures, scholars in the learning sciences investigate these…

From 2012 to 2016 all teachers of mathematics, in primary through to upper secondary and adult education, in Sweden are to be given the opportunity of receiving state-coordinated professional development (PD), generally involving around one meeting per week for a year. We examine the ways in which this programme and its content are research-based…

A pair of papers re-examined the evidence from a national initiative to train all teachers in England to bring them up to the level of newly qualified teachers, who are required to know when to use and when not to use information and communication technologies (ICT) in their professional practice. The first paper confirmed that multilevel…

As a participant-observer, the author relates observations, interviews, and surveys from her experience in a Cuban Escuela al Campo ("School to the Countryside," or EAC) camp located on a collective farm outside of the city of Havana. The Pioneers, the youth section of the official Cuban Communist Party, organize the EAC program…

In 2004 UNAIDS and its development partners first introduced the Three-Ones Principles. Since then, many governments have developed national strategic frameworks and guiding policy documents to help coordinate more effective national responses in the battle to overcome AIDS. In this article, I outline how essential it is for government agencies,…

In the period 1917 to 1934, from being a country where almost ninety percent of the population consisted of illiterate peasants, the Soviet Union was transformed into an emerging industrialized society, where almost ninety percent had achieved literacy. The massive campaign which achieved this is described in this article. (Author/CB)

This article describes an effort to create a teacher learning community in which university and local school teachers worked together to improve the teaching of writing at elementary and secondary levels. I describe how a university's National Writing Project (NWP) engaged in developing a cadre of selected teachers to share understandings about…

The direction quality assurance and its ancillary practices is taking in the transformation process in South Africa is discussed in this article. The article argues that it is incorrect to suggest that the higher education system has been captured by managerialism. While efficiency is an important driver of the system, the imperatives of redress…

The article presents extracts and summaries from the UNESCO preliminary draft recommendation to Member States concerning the development of adult education, and, in anticipation of confirmation by the 1976 General Conference (with profound consequences for adult education predicted), it outlines steps to be taken by adult educationists before the…

Describes the Technology for All Americans Project (TfAAP) of the International Technology Education Association (ITEA). The project's goal was to articulate a vision of what it means to be technologically literate, how this can be achieved at the national level, and why it is important. Discusses technology-education standards and the principles…

Argues that the British Government's National Curriculum document contains conflicting messages, particularly regarding "relevant education" and "cross curricular learning." Points out what the author considers to be puzzling contradictions and confusions operating within the government's own ideology and educational aims. (TW)

Uses France and England--because of their radically different institutional and ideological traditions in education--to illustrate common trends in educational accountability. Explains general trends affecting advanced capitalist societies at the present time, e.g., the use of corporate management approaches in education and the adoption of…

Presents the results of a survey conducted by the Canadian Society for Education through Art (CSEA). The survey questioned the relevance of policies in place since the late 1960s. The policies addressed subjects including competitions and exhibitions, commercially prepared materials, and the teaching of art. Includes responses and discussion. (MJP)

The AIDS epidemic presents a complex of issues that require global answers, involving entire societies. The only sustainable solution is to include all sectors of society in a multidisciplinary collaboration, within which the formal education system plays a key role in delivering a comprehensive response to the disease at the national level.…