In this article I examine approaches to school leadership in Scandinavia by applying a historical lens. I start by drawing attention to some aspects of the ideology and the history of the Scandinavian education systems in order to discuss how these aspects intersect with the globalised policy trends, and where there is likely to be tensions…

This paper explores the challenges that neoliberalism and the globalized new economy present to the politics of linguistic minority movements by ethnographically examining language policy as a discursive process, rooted in political economy. Following the post-WWII period, as most Western States restructured from welfarism to neoliberalism, there…

Innovation is the key to productivity growth and prosperity. Most empirical cross-country analysis of the determinants of innovation focus mainly on developed countries. The objective of this study is to fill this gap in the research and analyze the determinants of innovation in transition countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.…

Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, the rapid liberalization and democratization of Taiwan has led to the transformation of its political structure from a single-party system to a full-fledged two-party system. Along with this political opposition are the two contrastive concepts, the North and the South. Located in this background, this…

Recent advances in interactive web technologies, combined with widespread broadband and mobile device adoption, have made online collective action commonplace. Millions of individuals work together to aggregate, annotate, and share digital text, audio, images, and video. Given the prevalence and importance of online collective action systems,…

Objectives: To describe prevalence of childhood experiences of adversity in rural South African youth and their associations with health outcomes. Methods: We analyzed questionnaires and blood specimens collected during a baseline survey for a cluster randomized controlled trial of a behavioral intervention, and also tested blood HIV and herpes…

At points of instability in a system--whether a school, community, or any other social system--there is the opportunity for breakdown or breakthrough. In that moment of opportunity arises the possibility for significant change through the emergence of new norms or standards of behavior that reflect the evolving values of the larger group. What…

This paper examines the relative benefits of general education and vocational training in Romania, a country which experienced major technological and institutional change during its transition from Communism to a market economy. To avoid the bias caused by non-random selection, we exploit a 1973 educational reform that shifted a large proportion…

In dealing with Knowledge Management (KM) literature, we have to diagnose three essential points: first, we have detected a lack of comprehensive theoretical models based on "grand theories", secondly, we have discovered an overemphasis of "good" values, like openness and trust, that help organisations to learn. And thirdly, we have to recognise…

This paper analyzes the contradictory location of the professional and managerial new middle class within the rising tension between old systems of the industrial capitalist model of education, epitomized by a reliance on high-stakes, standardized testing and the newer forms of production associated with the "fast" capitalism of the global…

This paper addresses the relationships between leadership theory, practice and development, drawing on both the higher education and wider leadership literature. It explores why challenges and problems exist within the contested field of leadership theory and why gaps remain between theory and practice after more than a century of research--and…

The purpose of this article is to analyze the meaning and presumptions of competence in the concrete context of knowledge capitalism. First, the nature of competence as a "commodification of human ability" that obtains a standardized monetary value to sell in the labor market, is elucidated by applying Karl Marx's critical theory. Second, it is…

The current interest in multimodal rhetoric was anticipated by Jacob Riis's social documentary texts and presentations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In contrast with the socialist urban critiques presented by Friedrich Engels, Riis's work demonstrated profound ambivalence toward the city's poor. While calling for reform…

Ji-li Jiang's extraordinary memoir "Red Scarf Girl" transports readers to a tumultuous time in Chinese history--the first two years of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Caught between conflicting forces--joining the Revolution's call for rebellion, protecting her family, and fitting in with her peers--Jiang describes how her…

Following World War II, fear rooted in Communist paranoia gripped America. This distress seeped into all aspects of American culture, including education. The American people became increasingly worried that Communist influences would infiltrate the schools and pervert the minds of children. At the forefront of this quagmire was Dr. Earl James…