This study proposes an empirically grounded theory of how school reform implementation relates to effectiveness, useful for developing and studying many approaches to school reform both in the U.S. and abroad, and also for assessing how policymakers and implementers might leverage various aspects of implementation to create effective school…

Globally, teacher professional development is heralded as a key mechanism for educational reform. With governments investing heavily in PD programs, the aim of these interventions is not only enhanced teacher knowledge and practice but, ultimately, improved student outcomes. A substantial body of research has attempted to identify characteristics…

This paper explores how schoolteachers in Kazakhstan engaged with the Renewed Content of Education (RCE) that has been introduced by the Government, and how changes in their beliefs and understandings influenced classroom practice. The study draws on the ecological model of teacher agency and elaborates on factors that contribute to the formation…

Effective school leadership and ongoing teacher capacity-building are essential aspects of school reform and improving educational outcomes for students in developing countries. This paper examines a Timor-Leste curriculum reform and associated school leader capacity-building and the implementation processes for building sustainability, within the…

Professional learning communities are promising for teacher learning and improving the quality of education. In the past decade, there has been a shift in focus from within-school to cross-school PLCs: Professional Learning Networks. Knowledge of the underlying working processes of teacher learning in PLNs is scarce. This is even more complicated…

The Roma are facing serious disadvantages in education in Romania, where segregated schooling and lack of quality education are two main factors contributing to de facto exclusion from the education system. In an effort to compensate for this missing commitment of the formal education system, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide…

This article re-examines the contents of Singapore's Thinking Schools Learning Nation (TSLN) and Teach Less Learn More (TLLM) educational initiatives, introduced and implemented to promote change and to prepare Singaporeans for a twenty-first century knowledge-based economy. Adopting a critical realist perspective that enables investigations into…

Medical research is held as a field for education to emulate. Education researchers have been urged to adopt randomized controlled trials, a more "scientific" research method believed to have resulted in the advances in medicine. But a much more important lesson education needs to borrow from medicine has been ignored. That is the study…

This paper is based on a systematic literature review relevant to classroom integration of computer technologies in schools. The purpose of this review is to gain an accumulated view of uses, impacts and implementations of 1:1 computing initiatives for school children. Unlike previous reviews this study is not limited to certain countries or…

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…

This paper describes and analyses the work of a large scale improvement project in England in order to find more effective ways of fostering equity within education systems. The project involved an approach based on an analysis of local context, and used processes of networking and collaboration in order to make better use of available expertise.…

In a recent publication, Senge ("All systems go: the change imperative for whole system reform." Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, 2010, x) stated "at no time in history has there been a more powerful need for a new vision of the purpose of education." Increasingly citizens, academics and practitioners are calling for radical…

In most parts of the world today, the goal of providing all children with free and Universal Primary Education (UPE) has received broad national and international support and some educational systems have evolved from predominantly "fee-charging" towards "fee-free" status in recent times. In Ghana, for example, the endorsement…

Educational change is a fact of life for teachers across the world, as schools are subjected to constant and ubiquitous pressures to innovate. And, yet, many school practices remain remarkably persistent in the face of such innovation. This paradox of innovation without change is perplexing for policymakers and practitioners alike. This paper…

The Respect program is a whole school approach to prevent and reduce problem behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate which conditions in schools helped them to continue the program successfully after the end of the 1-year implementation period. The study also looked at the actual continuation after the program end. Especially, we…