We explore the significance of the "affective turn" in respect to higher education policy in the UK. This turn centres on creating new subjects of attention for the "employable" student and the "non-traditional" student, the latter defined as students from backgrounds with no earlier history of higher education…

Educational research over the last decades has been preoccupied with the way the global discourse has been employed in national educational policy making. Examining a case of teachers' continuing education in Greece, the paper focuses on the way this global discourse has been selectively appropriated by national agents. Using data of focused…

Teachers' professional development is not exclusively concerned with supporting teaching and knowledge. Support is required for teachers to reflect on their existing practice and adapt new knowledge and beliefs to their own teaching milieu. Therefore, design policies that support teachers are very vital for professional development. Knowledge on…

The proliferation of policy think tanks and more broadly the rise of "policy networks" can be viewed as indicative of important global transformations in the nature of the state. That is, the emergence of new state modalities, with a shift away from government towards forms of polycentric governance, where policy is produced through…

In attempting to explain state support of public higher education, this study develops a theory-driven, comprehensive conceptualization of the state political system within a larger theoretical framework that consists of state economic and demographic factors and higher education system attributes. Furthermore, although the higher education policy…

This nonexperimental survey research investigated whether enrollment, location, expenditures, percentage of free and reduced lunch and percentage of minority students influenced Georgia's superintendent and board chairperson satisfaction. In addition, this study investigated whether respondents' satisfaction could predict student achievement.…

This book samples recent and emerging trust research in education including an array of conceptual approaches, measurement innovations, and explored determinants and outcomes of trust. The collection of pathways explores the phenomenon of trust and establishes the significance of trust relationships in school life. It emboldens the claim that…

Everybody agrees that school bullying is a major problem, but considerable controversy exists over the best way to address the problem. The following discussion presents (a) a brief analysis and synthesis of the current state of the art, (b) underscores the need to avoid another piecemeal set of policy and practice initiatives, and (c) stresses…

The purpose of this study was to explore the production, communication, interpretation and contestation of new physical education (PE) and physical activity (PA) policy initiatives introduced in Mississippi and Tennessee for the academic year 2006-2007. These states provide a relevant context to study such issues, since Mississippi has the highest…

The chapter explores critical roles of internal evaluators in contemporary organizational settings. The need is highlighted for an expanded, reconfigured, unorthodox set of roles and styles of work to meet the needs of the emerging learning organizations effectively. A discussion of major categories of internal evaluator roles emerged from the…

This study sought to identify major school improvement reform programs and initiatives in Louisiana during the period of 1997 to 2005. The criteria used to identify each program included: state funding that averaged at least $2 million per year in state funds; programs that affected teachers and students for school improvement purposes; and,…

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s teacher preparation for the schools sector in the United Kingdom was subject to a series of reforms and innovations including the establishment of new institutional arrangements to oversee the sector, namely the Teacher Training Agency (TTA--now the Training and Development Agency, TDA). Since 2002 the arrangements…

Objectives: The authors sought to ascertain the details of medical school policies about relationships between drug companies and medical students as well as student affairs deans' attitudes about these interactions. Methods: In 2005, the authors surveyed deans and student affairs deans at all U.S. medical schools and asked whether their schools…

A simulation of the foreign policy decision-making process, as described in this article, can assist an instructor in linking students' abstract understanding of complex political events, circumstances, and decision making to the real-world interplay of the multiple factors involved in decision making. It is this type of active learning that helps…

Purpose: The Hong Kong government recently reformed pre-primary education with the introduction of a voucher scheme. At the time this policy caused considerable opposition from across Hong Kong Society. This paper seeks to use Fairclough's model of critical discourse analysis to explore a key policy text and seeks to assess to what extent such an…