Many countries are now creating world-class universities (WCUs) as essential parts of their higher education reform agendas, and as national goals. It is legitimate to ask whether every country that aspires to build a WCU can do so--especially developing countries. To answer this question, this paper provides a three-step framework. The first step…

Cathy Sandeen is Vice President for Education Attainment and Innovation at American Council on Education, the nation's largest organization providing leadership and advocacy for all sectors of higher education. Within this role she develops and articulates ACE's attainment agenda and currently oversees a large research project on Massive Open…

Many policy documents addressing the future of teacher education do not take into account the fundamental unpredictability of the future, nor the opposing forces that will try to influence that future. Through the analysis of 48 scenario documents on the future of education or teacher education, we identified a set of unpredictable key factors…

This article emphasizes the importance of introducing/providing character education during the early years of child development in order to raise morally responsive citizens. Noting the rampant acts of violence and malicious crime at a time marked with deep global turmoil in many societies, the authors argue for an exhaustive study of the recently…

In the two decades, since Staff and Educational Development Association was formed, educational development has become a mature and internationally recognised discipline, informed strongly by the scholarship of teaching. Writing about teaching, learning and assessment has helped to describe, distil, analyse and affect practice, and to change the…

This article foregrounds the iterative journey of a group of educational development (ED) practitioners at a research-led university towards an enhanced understanding of the ED opportunities we offer. Reflecting on the intention of our interventions to facilitate academics' professional learning, we developed a framework within which the range of…

School councils have been an integral part of primary school life for the last decade and, despite not being mandatory in England, they are now to be found in the vast majority of primary schools. This research article aims to examine the current position of school councils in terms of their organization, the issues they address and the views held…

Forget basketball and March Madness. Aside from always pressing financial issues, it is "MOOC madness" that has emerged as the topic "du jour" at a growing number of American colleges and universities. Indeed, in boardrooms all across the country, people are grappling with what the advent of MOOCs--massive open online courses--means to their…

When "Academic Questions" editor Peter Wood asked the author to give some thought to the dispute between the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), he thought he should say no. Well, what did the CFR report prepared by an independent task force chaired by Joel I. Klein,…

The idea that schools can impact positively on student outcomes is a crucial driver in the rise of interest in school improvement research and practice. This review focuses on "from exclusion to inclusion." With a specific focus on children with special educational needs (SEN), this review addresses the forms of classroom practice that…

Borrowing from banks has become a common practice among Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs), and operating with a heavy debt load has become a characteristic of Chinese higher educational development. Substantial financial commitments acquired by HEIs during their rapid expansion since 1998 are now having serious consequences: numerous…

This article utilises the main principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness as one conceptual and methodological strategy for making sense of Nepal's recent experiences of educational reform, primarily an increasing loss in ownership in the transition from a project to programme (SWAp) aid delivery paradigm. Whilst drawing on…

International exhibitions provide a good arena in which to study the circulation and transfer of educational ideas and practices in the second half of the nineteenth century. Structured around themes of industry, progress, and civilisation, and defined as ephemeral museums of the new world of commodities for the consumption of the masses, they…

Charter schools--what was their original promise? They would enroll diverse groups of students. They would give teachers the room and power to innovate. They would be educational laboratories that would find new ways to reach students, and they would share those lessons with other public schools. But charter schools haven't lived up to their…

Since 1994, the eyes of the world have been on South Africa, observing with interest the societal reconstruction project, upon which the country had embarked. In this project, higher education is both the terrain and the perceived instrument of change. In this higher education system and its mission, the academic profession is pivotal--especially,…