The educational history of Upper Canada is commonly written as the succession of an elite group of educational reformers who advocated a centralized system of mass schooling. However, the recent shift in research on Upper Canada away from the narrative of prominent individuals who controlled the social, political, and economic development of the…

In Uganda, the implementation of universal primary education (UPE) in 1997 and universal secondary education (USE) in 2005 have led educational policy makers, teachers, parents, and students to seek creative solutions to the problem of ensuring educational quality as schools incorporate 4 million more students. Some Ugandans worry about…

The metaphor of "monoculture on the intellectual landscape" is used to analyse the effects of large-scale research management regimes. The metaphor of "monoculture on the intellectual landscape", derived from Shiva's "monocultures of the mind", is developed and illustrated with respect to gender and ethnicity. The…

This article examines Brazilian higher education (HE) politics from a post-colonial perspective. The term "post-colonial" originally referred to a historical period of colonial empires established by European nations. Nowadays, the term commonly distinguishes a field of contemporary studies of "defamiliarisation of the imperial…

For teacher education, this is perhaps the best of times and the worst of times. It may be the best of times because so much hard work has been done by many teacher educators over the past two decades to develop more successful program models and because voters have just elected a president of the United States who has a strong commitment to the…

Since the 1988 Education Reform Act, the teacher's role in England has changed in many ways, a process which intensified under New Labour after 1997. Conceptions of teacher professionalism have become more structured and formalized, often heavily influenced by government policy objectives. Career paths have become more diverse and specialised. In…

This paper begins with an exploration of the history of the international Education for All (EFA) programme and its tendency to overlook some marginalised groups of children, in particular those seen as having "special educational needs" or impairments and disabilities. The exclusion from "mainstream" education programmes of the estimated, though…

The right to education has an established legacy in international agreements and debates, but has nonetheless proved difficult to achieve across the countries of the world. This paper explores why this might be so. It begins by locating the current architecture of rights in Enlightenment philosophy and the political and legal formations of…

Class size is one of the small number of variables in American K-12 education that are both thought to influence student learning and are subject to legislative action. Legislative mandates on maximum class size have been very popular at the state level. In recent decades, at least 24 states have mandated or incentivized class-size reduction…

Can we imagine different ways of working together to secure better outcomes for children and families? What are the complex issues that underlie the apparently simple call for "joined-up" services? Children's services in many countries around the world are being transformed as part of the call for "joined-up working for joined-up…

Over the next three years, states will dedicate an unprecedented amount of federal funding to school improvement efforts at approximately 5,000 of the nation's lowest achieving schools. The $100 billion for education appropriated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the stimulus package, included an…

Of the numerous public policy debates currently taking place throughout the United States, perhaps no issue receives more attention than the persistence of "chronically" low-performing public schools. As of 2009, approximately 5,000 schools--5% of the nation's total--qualified as chronically low performing (Duncan, 2009d). Certainly,…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Alliance for Excellent Education Announces New Center for Secondary School Digital Learning and Policy: Center's Work…

This article discusses the recent changes to the Higher Education Opportunities Act (HEOA), P.L. 110-315, which have resulted in providing greater access to college programs to students with intellectual disabilities (ID). Prior to the amendments to HEOA, only students who were enrolled full time in a degree bearing program were eligible to…

Although Germany has experienced net in-migration for the past five decades, this fact has only recently been officially acknowledged. Furthermore, Germany is marked by a general monolingual self-concept very much attached to the idea of a nation-state with one homogeneous language. However, in large urban areas of Germany about 35 per cent of the…