In this article, we explore how the World Bank operationalizes its focus on poverty alleviation in one of the most controversial arenas of educational change: the expansion of privately provided schooling. We argue that the Bank's role in promoting private provision has been far more complicated than most critics have discerned. It has…

The Israeli Ministry of Education has recently initiated a program of reform in the training of public school principals that aims to expand state licensing regulations for educational leaders. This article suggests that the principals' training and licensing (PTL) reform should be linked to the attempt by Israeli policy makers to…

This article examines Minzu University of China (MUC), the nation's leading ethnic minority university, relative to faculty perspectives regarding initiatives to strengthen MUC as a comprehensive university. Based on a case-study approach, and employing organizational culture as a theoretical lens, the authors identify three narratives of…

The aim of this article is to examine how European universities, confronted with national reforms of their governance, have tried to resolve the dilemmas traditionally associated with internal reorganization, the redistribution of power, and the reformulation of teaching and research policies. The article does not focus on the central governance…

Education systems worldwide have served as a nation-building apparatus and national consciousness facilitators since the appearance of the modern nation-state. With the emergence of globalization in recent decades, however, a growing presence of cosmopolitanism and internationalization can be traced in education policy and school curricula.…

This article investigates Iraqi schooling during the 1990s under Ba'thist rule and after the regime's fall in 2003 and compares the treatment of Islam in the curriculum. I focus on the degree to which Iraqi textbooks under Saddam Hussein contained a Sunni bias and the changes introduced immediately after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq in…

This article uses multiple perspectives to frame international processes of education policy formation and then applies the framework to El Salvador's Plan 2021 between 2003 and 2005. These perspectives are policy attraction, policy negotiation, policy imposition, and policy hybridization. Research reveals that the formation of Plan 2021 was the…

This article shows how patronage politics affects a popular international education model: community-managed schools (CMS). Focusing on Honduras's CMS initiative, PROHECO (Programa Hondureno de Educacion Comunitaria), I demonstrate how patronage can undermine CMS accountability. Whereas supporters argue that CMS increases accountability, partisan…

This article offers a qualitative analysis of videotaped mathematics lessons taught by four teachers in a provincial university city in Finland. My study is framed not only by Finnish success on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) but also by the objectives of current mathematics education reform, which are consistent with PISA's…

South Africa's democratic transition was a time of optimism, with immense hopes pinned on the youth who would be educated to see themselves as equal citizens. It was also a time of pragmatic decision making, not least in the education sector, which would shape the future of the country. Negotiating the imperatives of redress, development, and…

The implementation of national educational reform in China calls for newer and stronger school administration. Recognizing the need to establish a knowledge base for leadership development, we employ a set of existing US professional standards for educational leaders as a frame of reference to unpack the complex role of Chinese superintendents.…

The purpose of this article is to explore Microsoft Corporation as a new international actor shaping educational reforms and practices. This study examines how the implementation of Microsoft's global Partners in Learning (PiL) program varied and was mediated by national politics and national institutional practices in two different contexts,…

This article examines the focus on teacher policies and practices by a range of global actors and explores their meaning for the governance of teachers. Through a historical and contemporary reading, I argue that an important shift in the locus of power to govern has taken place. I show how the mechanisms of global governance of teachers are being…

This essay explores the role of UNESCO, the World Bank, and the US Agency for International Development as key international actors shaping teacher development in Palestine. The argument presented is that international influence, particularly through donor-funded projects, combined with limited capacity within the Ministry of Education and local…

This article explores how teachers navigate and respond to the competing pressures of school change in a global policy context. In postcommunist Albania, national policies reflecting global norms for the teacher's role overshadowed complex and cultural aspects of teaching and learning and, as a result, led to gaps in implementation. On the basis…