Provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive review of contemporary research in education policy implementation. A companion to Allan R. Odden’s Education Policy Implementation, also published by SUNY Press, this book presents original work by a new generation of scholars contributing to education policy implementation research. The contributors define education policy implementation as the product of the interaction among particular policies, people, and places. Their analyses of previous generations of implementation research reveal that contemporary findings not only build directly on lessons learned from the past, but also seek to deepen past findings. These contemporary researchers also break from the past by seeking a more nuanced, contingent, and rigorous theory-based explication of how implementation unfolds. They argue that researchers and practitioners can help improve education policy implementation by not asking simply what works, but rather focusing their attention on what works, for whom, where, when, and why. Meredith I. Honig is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Washington at Seattle.

This book examines the directions of local higher education policy in contemporary China since reform and opening up. It involves investigating rationales and conceptualizing analytical framework of shaping multiple type-based local higher education system, including the local undergraduate universities, skill-based local colleges, and technical-oriented local higher education institutions. This book offers an in-depth understanding of problems and strategies in regard to addressing complicated development of local higher education institutions in recent decades in China. In addition, this book also involves exploring local undergraduate universities in China, the current mechanism of local universities from the perspective of organizational transformation, the emergence of application and skill-based local colleges and universities in China, the vocational education development in China as one major type of local universities, the local technical universities’ development in China from multiple perspectives, and the professional groups in local vocational colleges.

Co-published by Routledge for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Educational policy continues to be of major concern. Policy debates about economic growth and national competitiveness, for example, commonly focus on the importance of human capital and a highly educated workforce. Defining the theoretical boundaries and methodological approaches of education policy research are the two primary themes of this comprehensive, AERA-sponsored Handbook. Organized into seven sections, the Handbook focuses on (1) disciplinary foundations of educational policy, (2) methodological perspectives, (3) the policy process, (4) resources, management, and organization, (5) teaching and learning policy, (6) actors and institutions, and (7) education access and differentiation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, the Handbook’s over one hundred authors address three central questions: What policy issues and questions have oriented current policy research? What research strategies and methods have proven most fruitful? And what issues, questions, and methods will drive future policy research? Topics such as early childhood education, school choice, access to higher education, teacher accountability, and testing and measurement cut across the 63 chapters in the volume. The politics surrounding these and other issues are objectively analyzed by authors and commentators. Each of the seven sections concludes with two commentaries by leading scholars in the field. The first considers the current state of policy design, and the second addresses the current state of policy research. This book is appropriate for scholars and graduate students working in the field of education policy and for the growing number of academic, government, and think-tank researchers engaged in policy research. For more information on the American Educational Research Association, please visit: http://www.aera.net/.

This book examines the factors affecting the successful implementation of Education Sector Plans in developing countries. It provides a detailed comparison that draws on data from 27 countries to offer careful research conclusions and policy recommendations. Offering a detailed comparison of the schooling situation (e.g. availability of potable water and toilets, provision for the disabled) as well as educational outcomes (both test scores and percentages out-of-school) from the 27 countries using empirical evidence, the book examines the resources that have been invested in different education sectors, investigating the development and success of each plan. The volume uses correlation analysis to compare factors including the availability of government funding, national characteristics, ministerial decisions, influences of country and donor stakeholders, as well as district- and school-level issues. Thorough comparative analysis of the data is then demonstrated, with two measures of achievements to identify which factors can be considered as the most important in order to reach realistic policy and research conclusions. Timely and engaging, this book will be of great interest to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students in the field of education and international development, comparative education, and international education more broadly.

This volume informs the growing number of educational policy scholars on the use of critical theoretical frameworks in their analyses. It offers insights on which theories are appropriate within the area of critical educational policy research and how theory and method interact and are applied in critical policy analyses. Highlighting how different critical theoretical frameworks are used in educational policy research to reshape and redefine the way scholars approach the field, the volume offers work by emerging and senior scholars in the field of educational policy who apply critical frameworks to their research. The chapters examine a wide range of current educational policy topics through different critical theoretical lenses, including critical race theory, critical discourse analysis, postmodernism, feminist poststructuralism, critical theories related to LGBTQ issues, and advocacy approaches.

Examines how the concept of equality in education law and policy has transformed from Brown v. Board of Education through the Stimulus.

In the World Library of Educationalists, international experts compile career long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces of work – extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and practical contributions – so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Bob Lingard has spent the last 30 years researching and writing in universities in Australia, England and Scotland about changing education policy issues. His work is written from a sociological perspective and with a commitment to social justice. He is the co-editor and co-author of 17 books and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. In Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education, Bob Lingard provides critical sociological engagement with the politics of education. The focus is education policy and the impact of globalization, including epistemological and methodological issues necessary for researching education policy today. Topics analyzed include: educational restructuring new accountabilities and testing mediatization of education policy policy as numbers the global policy field and policy borrowing pedagogies. Lingard also considers the nature of educational research today. He has selected 12 of his key writings and in a critical introduction situates and contextualizes the work against key developments in the field and in the changing world.

American schools have always been locally created and controlled. But ever since the Title I program in 1965 appropriated nearly one billion dollars for public schools, federal money and programs have been influencing every school in America. What has been accomplished in this extraordinary assertion of federal influence? What hasn't? Why not? With incisive clarity and wit, David Cohen and Susan Moffitt argue that enormous gaps existed between policies and programs, and the real-world practices that they attempted to change. Learning and teaching are complicated and mysterious. So the means to achieve admirable goals are uncertain, and difficult to develop and sustain, particularly when teachers get little help to cope with the blizzard of new programs, new slogans, new tests, and new rules. Ironically, as the authors observe, the least experienced and least well-trained teachers are often in the most needy schools, so federal support is compromised by the inequality it is intended to ameliorate. If new policies and programs don't include means to create the capability they require, they cannot succeed. We don't know what we need to enable states, school systems, schools, teachers, and students to use the resources that programs offer. The trouble with standards-based reform is that standards and tests still don't teach you how to teach.

Building on the OECD implementation framework, the report proposes concrete actions to adapt the implementation strategy for impact. The report will be valuable not only for Norway, but also to the many countries that are looking to promote school-based professional development and bridge the gap between policy design and effective implementation.

This comprehensive handbook synthesizes the best current knowledge on teacher professional development (PD) and addresses practical issues in implementation. Leading authorities describe innovative practices that are being used in schools, emphasizing the value of PD that is instructive, reflective, active, collaborative, and substantive. Strategies for creating, measuring, and sustaining successful programs are presented. The book explores the relationship of PD to adult learning theory, school leadership, district and state policy, the growth of professional learning communities, and the Common Core State Standards. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking discussion questions. The appendix provides eight illuminating case studies of PD initiatives in diverse schools.