The purpose of this study was to explore how elementary principals facilitate and serve as catalysts for successful reading instruction and student achievement. The authors interviewed 10 elementary school principals in two school districts in a southern state to determine how they acted as instructional leaders in the area of reading in their…

Since 1997, parents' rights of participating in children's education have been recognized in Hong Kong. Parents have been consulted and invited to participate in PTAs, manage the school, organize school activities, and assist in school functions. However, implementation of parent-school partnerships signifies the notion of parent empowerment that…

The difficulty in education to determine causality between means and ends brings various issues and variables to the discussion about the antecedents of school effectiveness. Although teachers' level of professional development is clearly among the factors influencing student outcomes, little is known about the extent to which teachers connect…

This study was designed to examine 6-year-old pupils attending different preschool institutions in Turkey in view of the multiple-intelligences theory. This research aims at determining whether the gender of pupils attending different preschool institutions leads to differences in their verbal-linguistics, mathematical-logical, visual-spatial,…

This article is an attempt to reflect on the doubting process as an emerging perspective in school change. After introducing the notion of doubt and its importance to school change, the author describes conditions influencing the doubting process. She reflects on these conditions in a case example of a secondary school principal who doubted the…

This review considers three areas of findings from research on district roles in reform, drawing particularly on the studies of claimed successful districts. First, the author identifies the challenges confronting district efforts to implement systemwide improvements in student learning. Then, he summarizes evidence about how successful case…

The purpose of this article is to examine a nationwide effort of educational reform in Peru. Specifically, the authors take a close look at the nation's efforts to change secondary education through the implementation of a 2-year postsecondary learning opportunity called the "bachillerato." First, the authors briefly present the contextual…

This article presents the experiences of 89 members of the academic staff at a new university that emerged from a merger of two historically disadvantaged tertiary institutions located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The authors examine the responses of these participants to new pedagogical strategies that emphasize learner-centered…

This article addresses the issues of how cultural historical theory of activity can help design democratic teacher education classrooms aimed at developmental learning and dialogical, humanitarian thinking of students and prospective teachers. On the basis of retrospective analysis, the author begins by summarizing activity-based approaches to…

This article focuses on the latest developments in higher educational policy in the Russian Federation and the influence of international organizations such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on these policies and education reforms. This article's primary purpose is to explore how the newly…

This article addresses the issue of preparing teachers as curriculum leaders to support the wide-ranging curriculum reforms that characterize societies in the Asian Pacific region. It draws on social cognitive theory and, in particular, on what has come to be called "teachers' sense of efficacy." The study sought to extend that research in a…

With Christianity and the Jewish religion, Islam has been the leading divine religion, accepted and obeyed by millions over a large geography since its declaration in the early 7th century. In this article, the authors shed light on some milestones in Islamic civilization, such as the golden age, the Abbasids, the Ottomans, and the rise of Western…

The purpose of this study was to gauge the profile of evolutionary theory in Lebanese undergraduate biology programs. The research focused mainly on the views of university biology department heads, given that they are the people who exercise the most direct influence over their departments' ethos. An Australasian sample was chosen as a reference…

Turkey has been undergoing significant economical, social, and cultural changes for the last 20 years. It is inevitable that the society and its individuals are affected by this change. From this point of view, the purpose of this research was to determine the extent to which women in Turkey have been affected by this change. According to the…

This article addresses how principals can shape school culture. The author begins by examining the definitions of school culture and the meaning of principalship. The author provides an overview on the literature on the impact of principal leadership on school culture. The author also looks at the present principalship situation in the Turkish…