This paper explores the notion of evidence-informed policy making and the factors that have hindered its development in the UK to date. It then explores Flyvbjerg's notion of "phronetic" expertise and hypothesises that the learning that accrues from engaging with multiple cases could also lead to policy-makers developing competency…

Recruitment, preparation, and retention of graduates of elite colleges is considered an innovative approach to improve teacher quality and promote change in the neediest schools. While the debate over the effectiveness of such programs is heavily focused on programs like Teach For America, this paper considers three teacher preparation programs…

Recent attention to youth activism for school reform reveals positive student outcomes. Yet educators may object to the use of social actions in schools, diminishing opportunities for these benefits to accrue. This paper analyzes educators' conceptions about the proper exercise of student voice within schools and how these coincide with…

This paper pinpoints and discusses key aspects of the current approaches to school reform in the Arab world against the backdrop of what is accepted as the best practice in the international literature on effective school reform and educational change. The main goal of the paper is to highlight deeply ingrained assumptions and practices that are…

Within the academic field of futures in education there has been concern that pupils' negative and pessimistic future scenarios could be deleterious to their minds. Eckersley ("Futures" 31:73-90, 1999) argues that pessimism among young people can produce cynicism, mistrust, anger, apathy and an approach to life based on instant…

Of late, teachers unions have worked together with district management in new and notable ways. This paper examines the role of teachers unions in shaping the Together Initiative (TI), which seeks to increase autonomy and broaden decision making in urban schools in one northeastern state. In general, state-level union leaders have taken more…

This article examines the literacy practices of three school-based student activist groups: a Gay-Straight Alliance, a high school chapter of Amnesty International, and a human rights club unaffiliated with Amnesty. Specifically, this article investigates how members of the different groups advanced their projects by repurposing school genres such…

The intention of the authors in this article is to contribute to the discussion concerning educational change by implementing the concept of social innovation. We argue that the application of the concept of social innovation makes it possible to better understand the process of implementation as well as sustainability and the social impact of…

Recent educational reforms in Norway include national tests and monitoring mechanisms to see if key outcomes are being achieved. At the same time, Norway has not established the follow-up mechanisms like high-stakes incentives and rewards that are characteristic of accountability policies in some other countries. As a consequence, one could argue…

While research has documented the many ways in which student voice can enable educational change, the process of how adults can help to enable student voice is less clear. This article examines how adults new to working as advisors of student voice initiatives begin to develop partnerships with young people. Using a Youth-Adult Partnership…

In 2007, Activity Based Learning (ABL), a child-centered, activity-based method of pedagogical practice, transformed classrooms in all of the over 37,000 primary-level government schools in Tamil Nadu, India. The large scale, rapid pace, and radical nature of educational change sets the ABL initiative apart from most school reform efforts.…

The countries of Latin America have been no exception to global calls for educational transformation and teacher professionalization at the secondary level. One of the newest of these reforms is Mexico's Reforma de la Educacion Secundaria (RS) (Reform of Secondary Education), launched in 2006. This article examines portrayals by various actors of…

International research documents a variety of approaches for fostering the professional development of principals. These studies mainly draw upon survey and interview data. Less attention has been paid to observing professional development processes. This article aims to examine how professional learning is played out empirically in the…

Most countries have taken equality of education as a paramount issue, but policy initiatives have not taken the same patterns across the nations. This paper addressed the features of equality policies and their changes in South Korea through an array of target groups and types of policy measures. According to a contingency approach, Korea relied…

The purpose of this analysis is to reconsider organizational replication as a strategy for large-scale school improvement: a strategy that features a "hub" organization collaborating with "outlet" schools to enact school-wide designs for improvement. To do so, we synthesize a leading line of research on commercial replication to construct a…