Using a critical postmodern framework, this article analyzes the relationship of the decision-making processes of anarchism and neoliberalism to that of deep democracy. Anarchist processes are found to share common core principals with deep democracy; but neoliberal processes are found to be antithetical to deep democracy. To increase the joy in…

This article examines the New Labour legacy in education, reviews the arguments of "The Pendulum Swings" in the light of contributions to this themed issue, examines early Coalition policymaking, and recommends four principles that should guide the search for a new approach to school improvement. Recent initiatives are found to be a…

Early years education in England has undergone a number of radical changes in the last decade. More recently, a change in government after the 2010 UK general election has meant that early years practitioners have experienced a period of uncertainty and change in policy in line with the ambitions and philosophy of the new Conservative/Liberal…

Despite a long history of post-independence aid to education, Kenya's relationships with overseas donors have, until recently, been markedly fractious. Donors' concerns about transparency and corruption, in the context of a political regime which became increasingly authoritarian, led to sharp reductions in aid to Kenyan education during the…

As one of 12 members of the drafting committee of Agenda 21's Chapter 36, "Education, Public Awareness and Training", Charles Hopkins reflects on the process of working on the now-famous document. Although it was noncontroversial at the time, Chapter 36 spawned education for sustainable development when it was given to UNESCO to administer within…

Data have long been considered a key factor in organizational decision-making (Simon, 1955; Lindblom & Cohen, 1979). Data offer perspective, guidance, and insights that inform policy and practice (Newell & Simon, 1972; Kennedy, 1984). Recently, education policymakers have invested in the use of data for organizational improvement in states…

Criticisms of the field of educational leadership and management have consisted of the arguments that scholarship is generally lacking in theoretical and methodological rigour. While it is beyond the scope of this Review Essay to fully examine the terrain of critical approaches to leadership, what is important to note is what little headway much…

The Singapore Ministry of Education's Enhanced Performance Management System (EPMS) was instituted in 2005 as a system of professional accountability to enhance the standards and stakes of teacher professionalism in schools. This essay explores how the EPMS, with its underlying paradigm of performance management, functions as a "technology of…

A "civic recession" is as worrisome as an economic recession. "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future" (The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012) should be praised for acknowledging the peril and seeking to rebuild the "depleted civic capital." Welcome, too, is the report's conviction that…

Based on over twenty years of empirical and intellectual work about knowledge production in the field of educational administration, I examine the origins and development of the canon, methodologies and knowledge workers in England. I focus on the field as being primarily concerned with professional activity and how and why this was established…

We propose an efficiency-based mechanism for state funding of public colleges and universities using data envelopment analysis. We describe the philosophy and the mathematics that underlie the approach and apply\break the proposed model to data from 362 U.S. public four-year colleges and universities. The model provides incentives to institution…

In this article, I will argue that a theoretical identification of the limit to inclusion is needed in the conceptual identification of inclusion. On the one hand, inclusion is formulated as a vision that is, in principle, limitless. On the other hand, there seems to be an agreement that inclusion has a limit in the pedagogical practice. However,…

Within the subfields of political psychology and the study of gender, the introduction of new data collection efforts, methodologies, and theoretical approaches are transforming our understandings of these two fields and the places at which they intersect. In this article we present an overview of the research that was presented at a National…

Countries around the world refer to twenty-first century education as essential to maintaining personal and national economic advantage and draw on this discourse to advocate for and embark on educational reform. This paper examines issues around education reform, particularly in British Columbia. It argues that reformers should give careful…

The current crisis in American schools has been more than fifty years in the making. The present assumption that "accountability" equals "testing" and that "education" equals "measurable objectives" has occurred in a brief lifetime. How has this happened? Quantz attempts to answer this question in this fascinating study. It is not a history of the…