International perspectives on educational reform and policy implementation

the long version

These cases are drawn from a period in which political intervention and attempts to control the curriculum are more overt than they have been before. The contributors document government attempts to reform education by legislation, and to harness education to national productivity in manpowering approaches to curriculum. With one or two exceptions, common features of the cases appear to be marginalization of professional educators, corporatization of education systems, instrumentalization of curriculum, and a wilful disregard of anything that might have been learned about education in the last thirty years. In spite of the diversity of origin and approach of the studies, they show common elements of the change process at work, which can be predicted and, once recognized and understood, can be directed and managed more productively. This is the second of a two-volume set offering a series of studies of educational change organized around the three themes: systemic change; from policy to practice; and curriculum contexts. The cases presented in this volume are designed to capture the experience of educational change in specific settings, to contemplate it and portray it in its cross-culture complexity from different contexts and different points of view.