Major Educational Reform Research Articles

Education policy and early fertility: Lessons from an expansion of upper secondary schooling

This paper studies the effects of education policy on early fertility. We study a major educational reform in Sweden in which vocational tracks in upper secondary school were prolonged from two to three years and the curricula were made more academic. Our identification strategy takes advantage of cross-regional and cross-time variation in the implementation of a pilot scheme preceding the reform in which several municipalities evaluated the new policy. The empirical analysis draws on rich population micro data. We find that women who enrolled in the new programs were significantly less likely to give birth early in life. There is however, no statistically significant effect on men's fertility decisions. Our results suggest that the social benefits of changes in education policy may extend beyond those usually claimed.

Does Higher Education Enhance Migration?

This paper examines the causal impact of education on within-country migration. A major higher education reform took place in Finland in the 1990s. It gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics and expanded higher education to all regions. The reform created exogenous variation in the regional supply of higher education. Using the reform as an instrument, our estimation results show that polytechnic graduates have a 7.5 (13.7) percentage points higher migration probability during a three-year (six-year) follow-up period than vocational college graduates.

Redesigning academic essays to promote teacher reflection on selected issues of learning and teaching related to the current educational reform in Hong Kong

Teachers in Hong Kong have faced constant demand for practice renewal due to successive waves of educational reforms in the past decade. This paper describes the design of an assignment structure that promotes teacher reflection on important issues related to a major education reform in Hong Kong. This particular assignment structure includes three components – self-reflection, understanding alternative perspectives and situated analysis. Teachers are expected to complete these components in a sequence. The design addresses teachers’ teaching experiences, engages them in learning alternative perspectives, and assists them to juxtapose self-reflection and alternative perspectives in analysing commonly encountered teaching situations. An evaluation of teachers’ levels of reflection in these assignments showed that both high- and low-scored teachers improved their reflection. Based on the findings of an interview study, this paper reported a grounded model explaining how this innovative assignment structure promotes reflection. The model situated the reflective assignments within the local teaching context in Hong Kong and highlighted the importance of different forms of assistance and guidance in facilitating teachers’ reflective engagement in completing these cognitively demanding assignments.

Policy changes and educational reforms in China: decentralization and marketization

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the major systemic educational reforms that China has undertaken over the past three decades and analyze the reasons behind their different degrees of success.Design/methodology/approachTwo running themes are identified among various reforms on the Chinese educational system: decentralization and marketization. The authors explore the driving forces behind these reforms and discuss whether the reforms were successful or not.FindingsIn conclusion, the authors highlight four takeaway lessons of Chinese educational reforms.Originality/valueThis is an original discussion of educational reforms in China in the contexts of decentralization and marketization.

World-class education: A response to global challenges

The importance of world-class education is demonstrated in the remarkable amount of attention the concept—and its implications for major education reforms—are currently attracting around the world. In several countries national and local education reforms seek to create educational systems whose graduates can successfully participate in a global society and contribute to an expanding global economy. This importance is also reflected in the wide range of specific educational programs being created, the choices being made, and the new educational challenges that are emerging. This special issue of Prospects critically examines the continued efforts to identify and analyze the possibilities and limitations of attempts to further refine measures of worldclass education. Further, it presents detailed case studies of the interpretations made by several countries and initiatives, such as South Korea, China, the state of Ohio in the United States, and the International Baccalaureate (IB), as they design and implement institutional responses to the evolving global challenges. The authors contributing to this issue, guest-edited by Dr. Don Adams, point to the complexity of various definitions that the concept encompasses. They also single out a predominant definition, which equates a ‘‘world-class’’ educational system with students’ excellent scores on international tests. In some countries, attaining world-class education has become a vigorous national policy. One might view the increasingly important international assessments as entrance examinations to the exclusive club of countries with such educational systems or see them as a set of supranational instruments for standardization. Thus, as Adams points out, important questions remain to be answered: Who is involved in advocating for testing to play a key role in constructing quality education? Whose voices are being heard? Whose are not? Whose discourse is it that results in particular standards, benchmarks, and indicators? Susan Robertson notes that we could view world-class education as an education ‘‘[...] that is open-minded about, and open to, learning that engages with a range of world concerns’’. Instead, it has been viewed instrumentally. The foci become questions related to what world-class education involves, what path will lead to it, and who will benefit. She

Sustainable education: basic principles and strategic recommendations

This article introduces the guiding principles of sustainable education. It starts from the observation that many education systems around the world have launched ambitious programs aiming to raise academic standards and to reconcile concerns for excellence with concerns for equity. However, many of these programs have failed to reach their ambitious goals. Meanwhile, the rapid changes taking place in the globalising world call for major educational reform in which the needs of all students are taken into account, the natural resources of the educational environment are not depleted, and the young generation is optimally prepared to meet the demands of the future world. Concerted action, comprising policy measures with regard to curriculum design, teaching methodology, teacher training, and equity-enhancing programmes will be needed to raise the extent to which the educational domain produces sustainable output.

The Bologna Process in Italy

Italy was among the promoters of the Bologna Process and the early adopters of the reform. If one looks at its impact on the formal structure of curricula and study programmes, the reform undertaken under the Bologna banner seems to have been one of the major educational reforms ever achieved in Italy. This article describes how the Bologna Process has unfolded in Italy, looking at the reasons why a reform that for long eluded Italian policymakers and higher education managers finally succeeded. The theme is approached from the point of view of the contemporary theories of institutional change, looking at the actors and interactions that made this reform possible despite strong opposition. In fact, it was a series of contingent events that weakened the balance of powers governing Italian HE, thus making institutional change possible.

Home–school relationships: a school management perspective

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) is in the process of initiating major education reform designed to improve schools. Parental involvement in support of student learning ranks high on the reform agenda. This study explores managerial aspects of implementing home–school relationships in seven primary Public Private Partnership (PPP) schools in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Participants involved in this study were principals, social workers, teachers, parents, and students. Managerial aspects discussed in this paper relate to: (a) benefits of home–school relationships; (b) roles and responsibilities of stakeholders; (c) home–school communication; and (d) constraints and challenges faced in the management of home–school relationships. The findings elicit recommendations for improvement which may inform the work of policymakers, principals, social workers, teachers and parents in their continued efforts to build home–school relationships.

Educational reforms, cultural clashes and classroom practices

This article presents an ongoing study of educational policy enactment in Singapore lower primary English classrooms. It explores how teachers react to and interpret educational reforms in their classroom practices against a backdrop of traditional cultural values. Using a prescribed coding scheme, the article presents the instructional organisational patterns and participation structures of the lessons. Through a systematic analysis of the enacted curricula, the paper examines classroom practices as well as teaching and learning activities in Primary 1 (7–8 years) and Primary 2 (8–9 years) English lessons in Singapore. The results suggest that there are cultural clashes between major educational reforms which emphasise independent/critical thinking and ‘Asian values’ which promote respect for authority and conformity.

Education and Mortality: Evidence from a Social Experiment

We examine the effects on mortality and health due to a major Swedish educational reform that increased the years of compulsory schooling. Using the gradual phase-in of the reform between 1949 and 1962 across municipalities, we estimate insignificant effects of the reform on mortality in the affected cohort. From the confidence intervals, we can rule out effects larger than 1–1.4 months of increased life expectancy. We find no significant impacts on mortality for individuals of low socioeconomic status backgrounds, on deaths that are more likely to be affected by behavior, on hospitalizations, and consumption of prescribed drugs. (JEL H52, I12, I21, I28)

Public Policies in the Higher Education of Kazakhstan

Paper examines major educational reforms undertaken by Kazakhstan over 1991-2001 in its higher education, which could be in a nutshell defined as marketization. It seeks to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of public policies from the US school of policy analysis perspective, which classifies different public policies into so called generic policy types with respective repercussions in terms of their impact on a specific policy area.

Teachers’ Willingness to Adopt Nature of Science Activities Following a Physical Science Professional Development

The major science education reform documents emphasize the need for K-12 students to have a robust understanding of nature of science (NOS), and inservice teachers consequently need to develop their NOS teaching repertoires. This study investigated the extent to which science teachers were willing to adopt new strategies and activities for teaching NOS in their classrooms. The participants were 36 elementary, middle, and high school teachers who were completing a year-long physical science professional development (PD) that included NOS instruction. Data sources consisted of surveys (teachers’ NOS views, teaching practices), collected work, and responses to post-PD follow-up questions. The professional development course was successful in that teachers incorporated many of these strategies and activities into their own practice. This study also endeavored to identify factors that facilitated the adoption of these new approaches to teaching NOS. While personal characteristics such as pre- or post-PD NOS understandings, NOS gains, and grade level taught were not related to the number of NOS activities incorporated, teachers from suburban and rural schools were significantly more likely to implement NOS activities.

Are returns to education on the decline in Venezuela and does Mission Sucre have a role to play?

Anecdotal evidence points to a falling standard of living for the educated in Venezuela. During this same period, President Hugo Chávez implemented several education reforms. We focus on a major university education reform known as Mission Sucre and its potential impact on returns to university education. First, we show that returns to education decreased significantly in Venezuela from 2002 to 2008. Subsequently, we explore the impact of the program on non-program participants and provide evidence that a substantial part of the falling returns at the tertiary level can be linked to Mission Sucre. Our results suggest that the reform created a negative externality on students who did not participate in the program, leading to a 2.7 percentage point decline in returns to university education for non-Mission Sucre students in the 23–28 age cohort.

Modern Languages in Scotland

This article critically examines the state (extent of provision) and status (public esteem) of modern language education in Scotland, which as a constituent part of the United Kingdom has its own independent education system. The notion of social capital, as conceptualized by Putnam and others, is used to show how attempts by language professionals in Scottish universities to create social ‘bridges’ and ‘linkages’ with stakeholders in schools have so far not been able to stem an overall downward trend in language study. As a major educational reform is getting underway in Scottish secondary schools, there may be increased opportunities for higher education language staff to build strategic networks but, it is argued, underlying support at the macro level is needed to ensure that such initiatives can be sustained more widely and consistently. Consideration is given to possible future actions.

Education reform and the quality of kindergartens in Jordan

The present study evaluates a major education reform in Jordan – the implementation of public kindergartens – and provides an example of how evaluation can be incorporated into education reform. In the context of education reform in Jordan, 532 public kindergartens have been created over the last five years. A stratified random sample of kindergartens was selected to represent these new public kindergartens (n = 84) and previously existing private kindergartens (n = 23). Independent observers rated the quality of kindergarten environments in seven domains. Overall, 13% of public kindergarten environments were observed to be inadequate, 43% were of minimal quality, 43% were good and 1% was excellent. In four of the seven domains, the quality of public kindergartens was significantly higher than the quality of private kindergartens; there were no significant differences in the other domains. Findings suggest the importance of continuing to implement high quality kindergartens in Jordan and of incorporating evaluations into education reform.

Cooperative learning for educational reform in Armenia

Armenia is in the midst of major educational reforms in which teacher professional development is a key component. Much of the energy devoted to developing education in Armenia is targeted towards enhancing student‐centred teaching, especially cooperative learning. This has become a significant challenge for many schools and teachers as they cope with understanding, learning and adapting these approaches in their current work. This paper explores teachers’ views and understanding of cooperative learning and then discusses how national education policies should address further implementation of cooperative learning in Armenian schools. Data were collected through a large‐scale nationwide survey and focus‐group interviews. Observations in training workshops on cooperative learning also constitute part of the data used in this study. The main finding is that most teachers believe that they have adequate knowledge and understanding of cooperative learning after attending the training workshops, but that only a few are able to integrate it as an active part of their pedagogical repertoire. This paper contributes to a currently weak research base on implementing cooperative learning in fragile educational contexts.

Challenges to the Work Life of Academics: The Experience of a Renowned University in the Chinese Mainland

AbstractUnder the major educational reform movement in the Chinese Mainland, which began in 1985, higher education was considered the most important apparatus for national development. The Ministry of Education initiated ‘Project 985’ to develop two top national universities into world‐class universities. As part of this project to raise educational quality and academic standing, the Ministry of Education carried out a reform of the university personnel system. The reform aimed to launch a new system of employment practices based on performance and contract, with an emphasis on competition and rewards. This research focuses on the severe constraints academics at a sample university in China faced at the state, university and faculty level. First, at the state level, the state directly set the direction of academic research. Second, at the university level, the new employment reform was imposed using a top‐down model. Most academics conformed to it but some employed a ‘double bookkeeping’ strategy. ‘Administrative domination’ also reflected a centralised approach at the university. Third, at the faculty level, a few academic‐administrators held most of the decision making power. Academics urged the university to offer a more supportive environment for conducting genuine scholarship.

Diversity, Choice and the Quasi-market: An Empirical Analysis of Secondary Education Policy in England*

This article investigates the extent to which exam performance at the end of compulsory education has been affected by three major education reforms: the introduction of a quasi-market following the Education Reform Act (1988); the specialist schools initiative introduced in 1994; and the Excellence in Cities programme introduced in 1999. Using a panel of schools for all state-funded secondary schools in England (1992–2006), we find that only about one-third of the improvement in school exam scores is directly attributable to the combined effect of these three major education reforms. The distributional consequences of the policy, however, are estimated to have been favourable, with the greatest gains being achieved by schools with the highest proportion of pupils from poor families.

Editorial for issue 3

This issue of the journal contains three articles on assessment instruments and one on policy implementation. In the first article Lars G. Bjork and Joseph Blase investigate one of the links between government and schools within the in the major educational reform No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in the USA. One of the aspirations of the NCLB was to make teachers and schools accountable for student learning and thus to make school districts and schools more active in implementing the reform. In this study Bjork and Blase explore the case of one school district and ways in which new consortia, a new superintendent and a number of middle managers worked on implementing the reform through distributing leadership and using a Total Quality Management model in the school district and in schools. An important feature of the school district reform was that middle managers, like deputy superintendents, had to implement new structures and practices that could eventually make their own position redundant. The case study demonstrates that the people who are responsible for implementing policies are very powerful political agents and thus very powerful in forming policies. The middle leaders never implemented all parts of the school district reform. This result may cause politician to reflect on implementation methods when they have decided on a policy and then want it implemented through local, school district layers. Politicians are, of course, the agents who make politics, but may have to reconsider how to get politics implemented because practitioners at all levels are not necessarily guided by the same interests as the politicians are. One practitioner interest may be not to make their own job redundant. In the second article Francis L. Huang and Tonya R. Moon examine the relations between teacher characteristics and student achievement in low performing schools in the USA. They question traditional knowledge and evidence as to teachers’ experiences, Educ Asse Eval Acc (2009) 21:191–193 DOI 10.1007/s11092-009-9079-x

School tracking and intergenerational income mobility: Evidence from the Finnish comprehensive school reform

This paper estimates the effect of a major education reform on intergenerational income mobility. The Finnish comprehensive school reform of 1972–1977 replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and shifted the selection of students to vocational and academic tracks from age 11 to age 16. We estimate the effect of this reform on the intergenerational income elasticity using a representative sample of males born between 1960 and 1966. The identification strategy relies on a differences-in-differences approach and exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually across the country during a six-year period. The results indicate that the reform reduced the intergenerational income elasticity by 23% from the pre-reform elasticity of 0.30 to post-reform elasticity of 0.23.