Background: The shortage of teachers in England and Wales continues to be a high profile area of scrutiny. Particular subjects (including mathematics, science and English) are categorized by the Training and Development Agency (TDA) for schools as priority or shortage subjects, and London especially has experienced particular shortages in teacher…

Background: Systematic reviews of educational research require synthesis of the results from a range of studies. When these studies are diverse in nature and methodological approach, synthesis can be problematic. Purpose: To offer a critique of the process of synthesizing systematic reviews by considering the stages of the process and the problems…

Background: One of the major problems that confronts most educational systems concerns the need for developing a valid personnel evaluation system based on a strong theoretical framework. Unless the criteria for evaluating teachers emerge from tested theories on teacher and school effectiveness, evaluators cannot readily be accountable for how…

This article discusses the relationship between policy, research and practice in the Singapore education landscape in response to Hargreaves and Shirley's arguments of Fourth Way principles of educational change. Examples of recent policy developments in Singapore are used to illustrate the interaction between judicial uses of research data and…

School leadership is an important factor in educational reform and school transformation. This article aims to examine the challenges of school leadership in Singapore through the lens of the Fourth Way. In particular, this article makes reference to three messages in the Fourth Way and examines the paradoxes and challenges faced by school leaders…

Policy makers are often looking for solutions to develop their educational systems in today's highly competitive knowledge-based economy. Hargreaves and Shirley's Fourth Way provides a useful approach in analysing policy trends, successes and pitfalls, based on an observation of practices and research evidences in the west, particularly, the USA…

Hargreaves and Shirley's "The Fourth Way" offers a valuable framework for considering the challenges and dilemmas that confront education change practitioners. In this article, I consider how well their framework fits the evolution and more recent changes in Singapore education. History, context culture and aspirations are seen as providing for…

This article explores the discourse of international educational reform that aims at meeting the various challenges of globalisation and a knowledge-based economy and preparing students for a better future in the twenty-first century. Specifically, it reviews the dominant themes, trends and goals of modern education. It does so by exploring the…

In recent years, education systems around the world have been keeping a keen eye on rankings of student achievement as measured by internationally benchmarked tests. This has led to considerable attention being paid to teasing out success factors that may account for countries that have emerged top of the ranks or those that have shown the most…

This article has two main objectives. It first outlines the first three waves of change termed by Hargreaves and Shirley (The Fourth Way: The inspiring future for educational change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, "2009") as the First, Second and Third Way that defined global educational policy and practice since the 1960s. It then introduces…

During the school year 2008-2009, the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam launched the "Year of ICT" to produce a breakthrough in educational innovation. In light of this development we have carried out a policy analysis to study the national vision on ICT in education. The policy analysis takes into account a decade of governmental…

Sultanate of Oman is one out of many developing countries around the world which have valued English as a very important international language and a tool for achieving multiple purposes. When His Majesty the Sultan came to power in 1970, the government accepted English as the only official foreign language and allocated huge budgets and resources…

This study examined the levels of pedagogical knowledge and skills as perceived by student teachers who were enrolled in the Post Graduate Diploma in Education program at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, from the beginning of their initial teacher preparation program to the end of their first year of teaching. Their perceptions were…

This article first illustrates how recent social, economic and educational development in Hong Kong contributes to teacher stress. It then presents data from an international study on teacher stress with respect to working with challenging students, i.e. students with behavioural problems. Teachers were asked to report on the perceived behavioural…

Talks of education transformation to improve the quality and outcomes of education in Malaysia culminated in the articulation of standards for teachers. The all new Malaysian Teacher Standards (MTS) launched in 2009 is to establish "high competency" standards for the teaching profession and to increase the status of teachers in Malaysia. This…