The Sultanate of Oman is a developing country that has accepted the English language as a significant tool for modernization. This was best interpreted in the opening of Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in 1986, which has delivered its different academic programmes totally or partially through the English language. One of the colleges of SQU has…

This paper reports the development of a scheme of characterising pedagogical practices in initial teacher education classes. The scheme is intended to provide baseline data on classroom pedagogical practices in Singapore's sole provider of initial teacher education (ITE). This study is original in that the research team has found no reports…

This article discusses the nature, power and effects of neo-liberal rationale in educational settings. By introducing discourse analysis of two cases, the influence of neo-liberal ideology on contemporary curricula and school programs were examined. The analysis showed that dominant discourses based on neo-liberal rationale presented themselves as…

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…

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 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…

In recent years, the goals and purposes of education within the international development discourse have shifted significantly away from education for productivity or human capital development and towards education for the fulfillment of the individual through human rights. The current global education climate provides governments with an…

This paper first reviews the literature on school-university partnerships to evaluate and describe challenges and paradigms of Japanese approaches to school-university partnerships in theory and practice. Secondly, it clarifies the role of three-year school-university partnership between the Nagoya University and the Tokai City Board of Education…

Banks (2002) stated that to implement multicultural education successfully, we must think of the school as a social system. Therefore, if educational equity and excellence are to be provided to all students, a systemic Total School Environment [Banks (2001) "Cultural diversity and education: Foundations curriculum and teaching, 4th ed." Allyn and…

In 1985, the Chinese Mainland introduced a policy of decentralization in order to help facilitate the spread of basic education. By looking specifically at the developmental experiences of Shanghai and Shenzhen, we can gain an in depth understanding of the specific circumstances incurred under new education reforms. While undergoing…

State Universities and Colleges (SUC's) in the Philippines are usually established by converting technical/vocational high schools into a full-blown university through legislative fiat to satisfy political agenda. Political influence appears to be inevitable particularly in the areas of jurisdiction and governance. Three (3) state universities in…

Building a strategic direction for education ultimately rests on the extent, to which we resolve the key issue addressed by UNESCO's International Commission on Education for the 21st Century (the Delors Report): what kind of education is needed to create the kind of world, we want to emerge in the future? Certainly, globalisation brings with it…

This study aimed to demonstrate an approach to measuring the value-added contribution to academic achievement made by education, and to identify the direct and indirect effects of a school's practices and its contexts. Multilevel modeling using hierarchical linear model (HLM) was employed to adjust the effect of pupil background characteristics…

For more than a decade, the Government of Hong Kong has instituted a policy of school decentralization aimed at devolving authority to all stakeholders, including the representatives of School Sponsoring Bodies, principals, teachers, parents, and community members. This study examines the relative contribution of two dimensions of school…