Process Of Educational Reform Research Articles

Evidence-Based Education: The (Not So Simple) Case of French-Speaking Belgium

Purpose: Taking the case of educational reform in French-speaking Belgium (the Pact for Educational Excellence), this article aims to describe the process of integrating evidence-based education (EBE) into an educational reform within a country where the influence of qualitative research is important. Design/Approach/Methods: A narrative case study was conducted to analyze and understand the stages of the ongoing educational reform process and the successive involvements of our research center in the work of this reform. Inspired by the paradigm of EBE, we initiated both the consultation processes intended to set the direction of educational decisions and programs. Findings: According to Slavin (2017, 2019), providing educator-friendly reviews, making available a broad range of proven education programs, and providing resources to help schools to implement proven programs are levers for implementing evidence-based reform within an educational system. This article shows that one of the three levers is fully met. For the other two, work being done on EBE in the U.S. and the UK in particular can save us time. Originality/Value: This article highlights concrete actions that will ensure the gradual establishment and acceptance by political and educational actors of an evidence-based reform.

The Readiness of the Teacher Training Institution in Preparing Teacher Competencies

Teacher quality determines the process of education reform. MOEC of Indonesia has prepared various schemes to achieve this quality. MOEC expects study programs held at higher education to meet the competencies of prospective teachers in four aspects, namely professional, pedagogy, social, and personality. This study is to describe the achievement of competence level as a teacher in the physics education study program. The method used is a survey method for physics education students, with 50 students participating. Competency measurement uses the test instrument consisting of four aspects, namely professional (65 items), pedagogy (45 items), social (40 items), and personality (40 items). The instrument refers to an evaluation conducted by National Education Standards Agency. It was analyzed using Two-way ANOVA to see the effect of gender and learning experiences. The results show that gender does not affect competence. Instead, the learning experience influences on competence. Average score of the ability of the students is lower than the limit specified teacher competency requirements MOEC. This result means that professional, pedagogical, social, and personality competencies are not yet the focus of teacher training institutions. The learning process experienced by prospective teachers (students) has not been able to improve competence significantly to achieve the MOEC's standard. This result implies that the study program needs to evaluate the curriculum and the learning process so that graduates can achieve quality teachers.

Improvement of the continuous education services financing for vocational training

Improvement of the continuous education services financing for vocational training

Challenging professional control? Reforming higher education through stakeholder involvement

ABSTRACTThis article explores the degree of professional control over a profession’s knowledge base and the extent to which this control, and the knowledge base itself, are challenged by various stakeholders’ agendas when public authorities allow societal stakeholders to influence education programmes. The analysis is based on a politically-initiated education reform process in Norway, RETHOS. RETHOS was motivated by concerns that the education system was failing to properly meet either the competency needs of health and welfare services or the need of users for high-quality services. Societal stakeholders were involved in formulating the new national curricula for health and welfare educations and a subsequent public consultation process. The data material comprises the proposed and final national curricula for nursing and social work, and written submissions in the consultation process. Our analysis shows that while different stakeholders approached the issue from different perspectives, the competencies they want newly-educated professionals to possess overlap. While the reform could have allowed the imposition of organisational dominance, organisational perspectives and agendas were seldom present, in either versions of the national curricula or in the public consultation process. The article’s main finding is that rather than eroding professional control, the process preserved this control.

The Hiring Process of Principals in Public Schools in the United Arab Emirates: Practices and Policies

This study aims to explore the current selection practices of school principals in the Ministry of Education in the United Arab Emirates. The study covers three main objectives: to investigate the current practices and policies regarding the recruitment of school principals in public schools in the UAE; to explore how the Ministry of Education equips school principals for leadership positions; and to survey school principals’ views on recruitment and training and their on-going professional development needs. Currently there are three main stages in the recruitment process: the first stage is to submit an online application, the second stage is the interview, and the third stage is undergoing a probation period as a school principal. A significant finding was that school principals at present are not satisfied with the current recruitment process and see it in need of change. Thus some recommendations made in this study are presented based on the research findings and school principals’ reflections and experiences. School principals felt they would benefit from more specialized training in leadership and management skills, as well as, visits to successful schools both in the United Arab Emirates and overseas. One important recommendation was to develop a new academic diploma focusing on management and leadership skills for school principals, a ‘Principalship Diploma’ which covers the fundamental core content, training and requirements for educational leadership and effective performance. School principals play an imperative role in supporting the school, staff, and student performance, and therefore it is extremely important to create a clear, transparent and effective hiring policies in order to hire the most competent, effective and best performing school principals to lead the educational reform process in the United Arab Emirates.

GENERAL AND PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEMS OF UZBEKISTAN AND JAPAN: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

In recent years, there has been a rising global need to train and educate certain number of workers to possess high quality, relevant vocational skills which lead to an enormous increase in the demand for professional education. In our country, using the experience of developed countries is crucial for the implementation of education reforms. Reforms based on modern approaches today are an important factor in the development of general and vocational education systems in the Republic of Uzbekistan. Comparison of indicators of the educational reform process in different countries helps to detect and overcome shortcomings, enrich one’s own experience and find more fruitful and optimal ways of developing the educational system. In this article, based on the comparison method, the general trends and features of the development, modernization of general and vocational education in Uzbekistan and Japan are determined. Based on an analysis of the current state of the general and vocational education system of the Republic of Uzbekistan, practical proposals were developed for further improving the prospects for vocational schools based on Japanese experience.

Türkiye’de Yabancı Dil Ağırlıklı Beşinci Sınıf İngilizce Dersi Öğretim Programının Uygulanması: Nitel Bir Değerlendirme

This qualitative evaluation study aims to investigate the implementation process of a current educational reform on teaching English to young learners in Turkey, the Intensive English Language Program in the Fifth Grade, from English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ viewpoints. Seven EFL teachers at pilot schools in the city-center of Erzincan were interviewed twice. The results of the first round of interviews indicated that despite the challenges arising from the pilot program, the teachers had positive attitudes regarding the potential advantages of the program. However, the final interview results painted a different picture in that although the main principles of the policy were seen as beneficial for young learners, the teachers faced a variety of challenges, such as a heavy compulsory curriculum in terms of content, lack of professional development support on the new program and scarcity of suitable language teaching materials. Based on both these problems and the benefits of the program, the teachers offered several suggestions for improving the quality of the program; these targeted elements including poor design of the program and unsatisfying professional development support. This study takes a snapshot of the implementation of the current EFL reform and presents suggestions for policymakers and teachers.

Razvoj Tempus programa na Univerzitetu u Prištini sa privremenim sedištem u Kosovskoj Mitrovici

Higher Education reform and modernization processes in Serbia were initiated by the overall 'Europe of knowledge' project, which encompassed Bologna and Lisbon declarations aiming to enroll Western Balkan countries into unique European Higher Education Area. By the adoption of the Law on Higher Education in 2005, these processes obtained their legal ground in Serbia and regulated implementation of the principles of both declarations, while Tempus (Trans-European Mobility Programme for University Studies) as the European Union programme for reform and modernization of Higher Education additionally supported internationalization of Higher Education Institutions in Serbia and harmonization of their curricula with highest European educational standards. This essay gives an overview on development of Tempus programme at the University Pristina temporarily settled in Kosovska Mitrovica since 2009, when the university for the first time applied for this kind of donation until its official closure and completion of implementation of all its projects where university was involved.

Practical Teaching Strategies in Ideological and Political Theory Courses

In the context of the accelerated process of educational reform, the practical teaching activities of ideological and political theory courses need to be further adjusted and optimized, and the effectiveness of practical teaching needs to be further improved. Through the analysis of the practical teaching situation of some schools’ ideological and political theory courses, it was found that there are many specific problems in the teaching of ideological and political theory courses. When the related problems persist for a long time and cannot be effectively solved, the overall teaching situation of ideological and political theory courses is unsatisfactory. This paper will analyze the problems existing in the practical teaching of ideological and political theory courses and put forward reasonable suggestions on how to better implement the corresponding practical teaching.

Integration of Schools in Latvia and Estonia Using Curriculum Reforms

This article investigates into the reform of national school curriculum in Russian-language schools in Latvia and Estonia. We assess how well the reform-related regulations have been integrated into everyday schooling practices and reflected in educational outcomes in order to measure the success of the education reform in terms of adopting the new learning standard and improving the PISA results. The study exploits the situation of natural experiment that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, with countries that used to have a common education system taking different reform paths and achieving different outcomes. National school curriculum is analyzed at three levels: as intended (stipulated in documents), as implemented (taught by school teachers), and as attained (reflected in test results). Such three-level analysis required studying the documents that described the key reform provisions, conducting a series of in-depth interviews in Russian-language schools to investigate the process of integrating the proposed innovations in teaching practices, and analyzing how PISA results in Latvia and Estonia had changed between 2006 and 2015. It is shown that the gap between the curriculum as intended and as attained has reduced in both countries. Schools have been actively integrating the changes proposed, and PISA results have been improving consistently, yet the methods of achieving those results differ between the countries. The natural experiment study design allowed to explore educational reform processes in the two countries as well as to assess the effects of the reforms introduced.

Changing policy contexts and teachers´ work-life narratives: the case of Estonian vocational teachers

ABSTRACTIn recent decades, the work of teachers worldwide has undergone deep change. We have seen that teachers have encountered recent challenges differently and adapted to educational changes to a different extent depending on their personal disposition, but also school leadership and workplace support. This study focuses on the example of Estonian vocational teachers that serves as an interesting case for analysing how the interplay of the transitional context and neo-liberal policy trends adopted since Estonia regained its independence in 1991, after 50 years under Soviet rule, have affected the individual trajectories of teachers’ lives. This paper aims to understand how the interplay of the institutional context and individual (work) lives shapes Estonian vocational teachers’ understandings of their work and professionality. We suggest that certain periods of practice are visible in teachers’ narratives and those periods might be considered as enabling different degrees of agency. However, our interviews also revealed that different reform periods have been perceived and responded to differently. In the context of 25 years of the educational reform process, the policies and requirements introduced have been refracted at different levels (Goodson & Rudd, 2017), including that of the vocational field, the schools and individual teachers. Our results confirm that teachers individual, social, cultural and material resources such as competence, career stage, relations and networks, school leadership and prevailing culture at schools have their role in enabling or hindering the agency of teachers.

¿Hasta dónde influyen las agendas internacionales en los sistemas educativos centroamericanos? Un marco teórico para su análisis

En este ensayo se propone un marco teórico para el estudio del influjo internacional sobre los procesos de reforma educativa en Centroamérica iniciados en los años noventa, a partir de las particularidades políticas y culturales de los contextos centroamericanos. Se hizo el ejercicio de poner en diálogo la corriente «internacional» y «cultural» de la economía política crítica de la educación para comprender la influencia de los organismos internacionales y sus agendas educativas en los procesos de reforma educativa, en función de las dinámicas históricas nacionales. En otras palabras, para entender por una parte, la interacción entre la globalización como capitalismo global, y los sistemas educativos nacionales centroamericanos como parte de los Estados-Nación; y por otra, las relaciones de poder entre los actores nacionales y su capacidad de agencia para hegemonizar ideológicamente a través del proceso de reforma educativa, una visión de sociedad y ciudadano en tanto clase, etnia, religión y género en un país.
 Palabras claveReformas educativas en Centroamérica, sociología de la educación, economía política, globalización, hegemonía ideológica

An Attempt to Understand the Negotiation of Teachers’ Identities in the Context of School Reform

Political discourses that state that the quality of an educational system relies on the quality of its teachers are frequent nowadays. This approach remarks the importance of teacher’s identity. However, how many times is this issue actually taken into consideration by the educational reform processes? This question turns relevant when we realize that many of the reforms seek to penetrate the classroom, and the teachers’ own practices. The following essay is an exploration of the elements that interact to shape the teacher’s identity in the context of constant change and school reform. How do educational policies and their discourses shape these new teachers’ identities? How do these identities interact with reforms? Do these reforms match the identities of teachers or not? The importance of addressing these issues is greater when we consider that they may have an important impact—whether positive or negative—on the educational change processes.

Реформування загальної середньої освіти в Радянській Україні в умовах авторитарного суспільства (1931–1991): історіографія та джерела

The article covers the organizational and content principles, positive and negative tendencies of the general secondary education reform in the Soviet Ukraine (1931–1991). It contains a bibliographic list of historiography compiled by the author on the basis of a selected, classified and classified source database (articles, brochures, monographs, manuals, theses, etc. produced by the researches in the 1930s – 2018) and sources (regulatory documents; periodic editions or serials: «Communist Education», «Soviet School», «The Collection of Orders of the People's Commissariat of Education», «Collection of Orders and Instructions of the Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian SSR», «Soviet Education», etc.; articles, brochures of the researched period related to the mentioned issue. The proposed bibliographic list reflecting the evolution of the national pedagogical thought – from its falsification within the framework of the communist ideology to the revival on the basis of national, democratic, humanistic principles in the process of Ukrainian statehood development, will be of use to researchers of the history of education and pedagogy, as well as to all the participants of the current reformatory process in the educational space. The positive and negative tendencies in the general secondary education reform revealed during the study, may be useful during the current intensive development of the New Ukrainian School, the implementation of the Law of Ukraine «On Education» (2017). Studying this problem through the prism of historiography and source study will promote the information support in the further historical and pedagogical study of reforms and counter-reforms of the past as components of the state educational policy in the context of sociopolitical, socio-economic and pedagogical determinants. This article is a continuation of the cycle of the source research highlighting the process of the general secondary education reform through the prism of source study in other historical periods.

Značaj reformi i internacionalizacije visokog obrazovanja u skladu sa Bolonjskim procesom

Higher education reform process introduced many innovations in educational systems and caused the passing many new regulations in this area. European knowledge society rests on two pillars - European Research Area - ERA and European Higher Education Area - EHEA. EHEA is being developed through international cooperation and academic exchange that is performed through government ministries, institutions of higher education, and students and teaching staff. It must be emphasized that economic and cultural globalization has imposed new challenges for the system of higher education. Internationalization of higher education is seen as one of the ways a country responds to the impact of globalization. Also, an important feature of the Bologna Process is the adoption of new approaches in higher education. One of them is concept Open Educational Resources. As can be seen in the paper, the Bologna Process represents a strategic transformation of higher education institutions, and the conclusion is that reform process in higher education leads to economic and social well-being of the country.

W meandrach akademickiej wspólnoty – (za)myślenie

The article presents socio-cultural changes which have been taking place in the academic environment as a result of the process of implemented higher education reform and social change undergoing in the society. The author discusses the process of a university transformation which, while subject to economic challenges, changes substantially the quality of the functioning of the academic community.

Why context matters: a comparative perspective on education reform and policy implementation

This article explores the significance of context within the process of contemporary education reform and policy-making. It draws upon evidence from a comparative study of educational change and transformation in seven education systems: Australia, England, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Russia, and Singapore. The article focuses on school leadership preparation, training, and development, which has become a policy priority and central improvement strategy in many education systems. The article explores how seven education systems are using this strategy to promote school and system improvement. The article reflects upon the centrality of context in the process of policy implementation and in the broader pursuit of system transformation. The article concludes that more contextually appropriate approaches to educational policy selection are needed and that borrowing approaches from other countries many bring unintended consequences and unfortunate side effects. Further, the article concludes that the process of policy implementation, in context, requires far more attention, if the intended outcomes are to be achieved.

Economics of Education

Discussion on economic aspects of education has acquired great significance in education research during the new millennium earmarked as Knowledge Economy. Education for the Knowledge Economy (EKE) refers to efforts at production of the highly skilled and flexible human capital needed to compete effectively in today’s dynamic global markets. Experiences of last one decade in the IT enabled BPO sector has proved India’s ability to produce and use knowledge as a major factor in economic development and has proved to be critical to India’s comparative advantage. Economists have recognized importance of EKE to develop a workforce that is well-trained and capable of generating knowledge-driven economic growth. Economics of Education analyzes both what determines or creates education and what impact education has on individuals and the societies and economies in which they live. Historically a great deal of emphasis has been placed on determining outcomes to educational investment and the creation of human capital. The primary mission of the economics of education group is to identify opportunities for improved efficiency, equity, and quality of education and promote effective education reform processes, to enhance knowledge of what drives education outcomes and results; to better understanding how to strengthen the links of education systems with the labour market; and to build and support a network of education economists for education policy planning and evolve structures and mechanisms for implementation.

Linking Faculties of Education with Classroom Teachers Through Collaborative Research

It almost goes without saying that a major reason for promoting closer relations between classroom teachers and faculties of education is to improve educational practice in the schools. Some educational observers, noting that the process of educational reform in developed societies has been extraordinarily difficult, might quip, "we've tried everything else, why not university/school collaboration." It is true that reform has been slow. Cuban, after a review of documentary sources spanning ninety years concluded that there is a stubborn continuity in the nature of instruction '' 1 And he cites only a few examples of close collaboration between practicing teachers and university faculty members in these nine decades.

An evaluation of the present situation of bilingual teaching in eight-year M.D. program and a vista for possible reformative schemes

Bilingual teaching is a necessary product in the field of both English teaching and profes - sional courses teaching induced directly by a purpose to catch up with international education level during the process of educational reforms. Yet few researches launched to study possible ways which may improve the curriculum model have been reported in the last five years. In order to follow up the previous studies and present fresh ideas as well as conclusions, this survey reflects the current status of bilingual teaching in eight-year M.D. program from the perspectives of both the teachers and students via questionnaire analysis together with face to face interviews. Moreover, our survey expresses underlying deficiencies of this teaching system from brand-new aspects which have never been discussed before along with their corresponding solutions objectively. Key words: Clinical medicine; Bilingual teaching in eight-year program; Present situation; Existing problems; Possible solutions