Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and Communities offers scholars, students, and practitioners important new knowledge about how current policies impact families, schools, and community partnerships. The book’s authors share a critical orientation towards policy and policy research and invite readers to think differently about what policy is, who policymakers are, and what policy can achieve. Their chapters discuss findings from research grounded in diverse theories, including institutional ethnography, critical disability theory, and critical race theory. The authors encourage scholars of family, school, and community partnerships to ask who benefits from policies (and who loses) and how proposed reforms maintain or disrupt existing relations of power. The chapters present original research on a broad range of policies at the local, state/provincial, and national levels in Canada and the USA. Some authors look closely at the enactment of specific district policies, including a school district’s language translation policy and a policy to create local advisory bodies as part of decentralization efforts. Other chapters reveal the often unacknowledged yet necessary work parents do to meet their children’s needs and enable schools to operate. A few chapters focus on challenges and paradoxes of including families and community members in policymaking processes, including a case where parents demonstrated a preference for a policy that research demonstrates can be detrimental to their children’s future education opportunities. Another set of chapters emphasizes the centrality of policy texts and how language influences the educational experiences and engagement of students and their families. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of implications of the research for educators, families, and other community partners.

Exploring the interplay between globalization, education and international development, this book surveys the impact of global education policies on local policy in developing countries. With chapters written by leading international scholars, drawing on a full range of theoretical perspectives and offering a diverse selection of case studies from Africa, Asia and South America, this book considers such topics as: How are global education agendas and policies formed and implemented? What is the impact of such policy priorities as public-private partnerships, child-centred pedagogies and school-based management? What are the effects of political and economic globalization on educational reform and change? How do mediating institutions affect the translation of global policies to particular educational contexts? What are the limitations of globalised policy solutions and what problems do they encounter at local levels? From students of education, development and globalization to practitioners working in developing contexts, this book is an important resource for those seeking to understand how global forces and local realities meet to shape education policy in the developing world.

In the Western world, education policy has increasingly become a local matter. Localities and schools adjust education to meet specific local needs, fragmentation and diversity. Globalization and the greater emphasis on knowledge in society however, also embody strong streamlining tendencies. This edited volume examines and compares the way in which local education systems in Britain and Sweden are created in the interplay between common tendencies of change and particular local conditions.

The goal of this volume of Research in Science Education is to examine the relationship between science education policy and practice and the special role that science education researchers play in influencing policy. It has been suggested that the science education research community is isolated from the political process, pays little attention to policy matters, and has little influence on policy. But to influence policy, it is important to understand how policy is made and how it is implemented. This volume sheds light on the intersection between policy and practice through both theoretical discussions and practical examples. This book was written primarily about science education policy development in the context of the highly decentralized educational system of the United States. But, because policy development is fundamentally a social activity involving knowledge, values, and personal and community interests, there are similarities in how education policy gets enacted and implemented around the world. This volume is meant to be useful to science education researchers and to practitioners such as teachers and administrators because it provides information about which aspects of the science education enterprise are affected by state, local, and national policies. It also provides helpful information for researchers and practitioners who wonder how they might influence policy. In particular, it points out how the values of people who are affected by policy initiatives are critical to the implementation of those policies.

Detailed accounts of two influential initiatives of the 1990s, whose educational and political lessons remain highly relevant: systemic and pedagogic reform in one of Britain’s largest cities, and the controversial ‘three wise men’ government enquiry into primary teaching to which it led. Alexander's controversial and widely-read report on primary education in Leeds has now been revised as a major study of policy initiatives in primary education and their impact on practice. The book examines an ambitious programme of local reform aimed at improving teaching and learning in the primary schools of one of Britain's largest cities. It addresses important questions about children's needs, the curriculum, classroom practice and school management. When first published, Robin Alexander's report was hailed as `seminal' and `the most important document since Plowden' but it was also quoted and misquoted in support of widely opposed political and media agendas. This new edition retains Part I from the first edition, detailing the impact of Leeds LEA's programme for educational reform. However, it also provides a totally new and greatly extended Part II, which gives an insider's account of the sequel to the Leeds report - the government's 1992 'three wise men' report. There is also a new introduction.

The State of Education Policy Research is a comprehensive, insightful evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of education policy research in the U.S. today. Editors Susan Fuhrman, David Cohen, and Fritz Mosher examine key issues facing policymakers and researchers including race, education equity, teacher quality, early education, privatization, and the politics of education policy. Collectively, the chapters present a complex mosaic of education policy research that integrates the views of policy experts from education, economics, and related disciplines. Important topics discussed in this influential new text include: Politics of education—Covers research on key political groups including teachers’ unions, business roundtables, parent and/or religious advocates, as well as state and federal lawmakers. Race—Discusses race as an issue as well as a non-issue and includes a discussion of the testing gap. State policies— Provides an overview of state policies directed at improving teacher quality and discusses the reality of a teacher shortage. National Trends—Analyzes current trends toward centralization and standardization and the growing influence of federal and state mandates. This book is appropriate for advanced courses in education administration, politics, and policy. It will also appeal to policy researchers in education, economics, and political science, to policy makers at the federal, state, and local levels and to the academic libraries serving them.