This article aims to explore the evolution of school leadership in Italy toward a model of leadership for learning. Italy is undergoing radical changes in the governance structures (school autonomy and accountability) affecting schools in general, and school principals in particular, based on the way they promote, manage, and monitor the…

World university rankings and their global popularity present a number of far-reaching impacts for vernacular scholarship. This article employs a multidimensional approach to analyze the ranking regime's threat to local scholarship and knowledge construction through a study of Japanese research universities. First, local conditions that have led…

This article chronicles the key challenges facing Ethiopia as it embarks on an ambitious, ideologically-driven and aggressive expansion of its higher education system in an effort to address its national goals of economic growth and poverty reduction. It is argued that the urge for higher education expansion has placed undue pressures particularly…

In the present study we provide an interpretation of a general narrative of transnational governance of higher education. All the elements of the narrative--competition, ranking autonomy and accountability--are visibly present in contemporary higher education policy agenda. We examine these not as separate ideas and practices but as an interlinked…

In its advancement towards an education quasi-market, Catalonia has recently been driving the development of "school educational projects" in all schools (both public and private) as a tool to facilitate school autonomy and family choices. A school educational project is a formal document in which schools identify their pedagogical…

This paper provides a history of academic development by examining how a South African institution coped with the potent social forces confronting it before the collapse of apartheid. Theoretically, it draws on the framework of Pierre Bourdieu and engages with a paper written a decade ago by Naidoo, who also used Bourdieu to understand…

Purpose: In Germany up until now, there has been very little research on staff development in schools. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively assess school-based staff development and to describe the interplay between different instruments of staff development (e.g. classroom observations, development discussions) at the school level.…

This commentary explores the so-called global "crisis" in education and the corresponding pressures and moves to "reform" education, and in particular, public education. The myths underpinning and driving these developments are examined. Supposed problems with (public) education and proposed solutions are explored. The…

This article investigates how state authorities in Norway and Finland design national curriculum to provide different policy conditions for local curriculum work in municipalities and schools. The topic is explored by comparing how national authorities in Norway and Finland create a scope for local curriculum. The data consist of interviews with…

Charter schools are a relatively new phenomenon in American education. Since the first charter school opened in Minnesota in 1991, they have expanded to 42 states and represent 6.2% of all public schools in the country. This growth has been attributed to a number of factors, chief among them evidence that charter schools can improve performance…

External support by a local coordinating agency facilitates the work of school-to-school networks. This study provides an innovative theoretical framework to analyse how support provided by local education offices for school-to-school networks is perceived by the participating teachers. Based on a quantitative survey and qualitative interview data…

With the strengthening of the global economy, contemporary societies have come to view the educational achievements of their young people as a major component of national competiveness. But there are substantial variations in the strategies employed by different nations. To maximize educational achievements, some nations believe that the provision…

Indigenous groups in Latin America face a double exclusion from higher education, with low levels of access to institutions and little acknowledgement of their distinctive cultural and epistemological traditions within the curriculum. This article assesses current policies in Mexico and Brazil towards indigenous populations in higher education,…

Zdenko Kodelja's purpose in this essay is not to give a comprehensive explanation of the impact of neoliberal ideas and politics on authority (in all of its forms) of universities and their professors. His aims are much more modest: to sketch a theoretical framework for better understanding what the essence of authority is; to show that the…

For many decades certain core principles have guided the conduct of teaching, research, and scholarship at American universities, as well as the ways in which these institutions are governed. There is ample evidence that these principles have strongly contributed to the quality of American universities. The principles have also made these…