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The present study is concerned with assessing the factors which affect principals' roles as change facilitators in the area of curricular innovation. It is designed to identify the prevailing modes of principals' change facilitator leadership styles in curricular related activities and to estimate the relative predictive ability of policy, strategy (i.e. values), organizational and background factors in explaining the variance of these leadership styles. A random sample of 69 principals from the school district of one of the largest cities in Israel participated in the study. Three mutually exclusive modes of principals' change facilitator leadership styles — Responder, Manager and Initiator — emerged from the analysis. The totality of the factors in the research model explained 20, 31 and 48 percent of the variance respectively in the three styles. Results indicate that background and organizational factors contribute relatively more in explaining the variance in these modes than policy and strategy factors.

Given the less mature homeschooling ecosystem in China, together with the similarity of purpose, the current study examined the lived experiences of curricular choice making in the USA and China and categories of respective families (homeschools), as a way of understanding curricular flexibility. In addressing these features, based on an updated model of curricular flexibility as it applies to homeschooling, the authors examined the aspects of who, what, when, where and how to see if this context offers new light. The authors then consider ways in which the model can be further updated for greater analytical clarity and accuracy. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

A descriptive case study was conducted in the Xi'an city of China and the Seattle metropolitan area of the USA. A survey and two rounds of semi-structured interview data were collected from ten homeschooling families in both contexts.

The study found families’ adjusted curricula for different motives, as they navigated differing societal contexts, and curricular flexibility in homeschooling contexts was theorized as standardization and structuring strategies and social dimensions, and family preference patterns were identified. Chinese homeschooling families had comparatively less variety of available resources and freedom to homeschools compared to American counterparts, and they operated with the awareness of a standard national curriculum and its social implications.

This study elaborates on a little-discussed topic – the overall curriculum of each homeschool and motives influencing changing curricular choices during the process of homeschooling. And it is the first paper to use the model to explicitly define curricular flexibility in the homeschooling context, thus extending the existing theoretical discussion of curricular flexibility.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the implications for higher education of a rapidly changing global context, where technologies play a role in the propagation of unsustainable patterns of change. Drawing from research on science and technology studies as well as existing work on (higher) education for sustainability, it seeks to expose the multidimensional nature of these patterns to raise a series of questions for educators, particularly those in engineering, computer science and other technical disciplines, and inform structured curricular and organisational interventions.

Theoretical perspectives on unsustainable patterns of technological change are explored with the objective of informing how the mitigation of their evolution could be addressed in educational settings. Key themes in the sustainability and higher education literature are then identified with the purpose of informing curricular and organisational intervention.

Countering unsustainable patterns of technological change requires the development of key sustainability competencies within more technical disciplines, informed by concepts in science and technology studies. This requires change at curricular, organisational and institutional levels to enable spaces for inter- and transdisciplinary learning to be created, so that skills may be developed.

This paper reflects on unsustainable patterns of technological change, identifying challenges for educators, in particular those in more technical disciplines.

With the accelerated impact of external forces on business school academic programmes, a key question that faculty and administrators must address is whether to continue to pursue incremental curriculum extensions (the traditional approach) or to undertake large‐scale reform and innovation efforts. A case is made that bold thrusts at large‐scale change are more likely to enhance educational relevance, invigorate faculty, and draw the B‐school closer to its primary customer‐the corporate community. Offers a propositional framework, built on seven principles of change applied directly to the process of curriculum change. Each proposition is supported with one or two mini cases drawn from experience within a large, publicly‐assisted university. By building on a series of bold, curriculum thrusts that include constituencies as active partners, a school will transform its character and strengthen quality.

The purpose of this paper is to describe in detail the recent curriculum reform at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and outline the process followed to achieve it and lessons learned.

This is a case study. It aims in particular to clarify the principles that underlay different elements of the reform and the critical junctures in managing the change.

The paper argues for a barbell approach – curriculum reforms that are both integrated at the macro level and sharply articulated at the micro level in terms of capabilities delivered. In the case of Berkeley‐Haas, the macro end of the reform is pinned down via an explicit leader archetype, that of a path‐bending leader, and an explicit supporting culture. At the micro end, the operative integration concept is termed “capabilities integration.”

The reform described in the paper shares goals with other recent curriculum reforms, but takes a distinctive approach to achieving them.

Although the number of higher education institutions adopting sustainability-focused faculty learning communities (FLCs) has grown, very few of these programs have published evaluation research. This paper aims to report findings from an evaluation of the University of Vermont’s (UVM’s) sustainability faculty fellows (SFF) program. It discusses how utilization-focused program evaluation is an important tool for developing and improving sustainability-focused FLCs. The SFF program aims to enhance sustainability education by bringing faculty members together to expand their knowledge of sustainability concepts and offer pedagogical support for integrating those concepts in higher education curricula.

A utilization-focused evaluation framework guided the evaluation’s design and implementation. Multiple methods were used to collect evaluation data, including in-person interviews and an online survey with SFF program participants.

The evaluation’s findings suggest that UVM’s SFF program expanded faculty understanding of sustainability concepts, encouraged curricular and instructional reform and made progress toward developing a community of faculty interested in sustainability education. The evaluation’s utilization focus was instrumental in providing useful information for improving the SFF program.

Evaluation findings expand what we know about the potential effectiveness of sustainability-focused FLCs, as well as challenges institutions might encounter when adopting such an approach to faculty development. Findings also point to ways in which utilization-focused evaluations can inform program development and improvement efforts.

This paper aims to provide a personal perspective on the extent to which business schools have globalized what they teach and to make content‐ and process‐related suggestions about how to make further progress.

The paper provides a mixture of quantitative and qualitative/interpretative analysis.

The paper finds that rhetoric around the globalization of business education has greatly outrun the reality of curricular change and this problem seems unlikely to be solved until the craving for distinctively global content can be satisfied.

Semiglobalization – the intermediate state of integration in which neither the bridges nor the borders between countries can be ignored – is proposed as a conceptual umbrella for organizing curricular change and in terms, of process, a two‐track‐approach, combining infusion and insertion, is recommended.

Both the conceptual and procedural recommendations of this paper are novel.

It is part of educational folklore that Australian State school systems are highly centralised. A corollary of the lore is that schools generally lack the organisational flexibility to cater adequately for the diverse educational needs of their students. This article tests these beliefs as they relate to the States of Queensland and New South Wales. The research finds that the form of system‐level directives is more prescriptive in the latter State. In both States, however, the proportion of time which must be devoted to prescribed activities is less than many would expect, both for teachers and pupils. Even where head office directives appear to constrain, regional office staff can practise “benign neglect” in their policing of the directives, if they can see that there are educationally sound reasons for doing so. The article finds that there is sufficient substance in the folklore to give conservative principals an excuse to resist introducing innovations in their schools. Any principals who are determined to adapt their schools′ operations to better serve the educational needs of their students are however, unlikely to be prevented by central directives.

Consortia of schools and colleges are mechanisms which have proved successful for managing TVEI programmes but which also offer LEAs and institutions a framework for coping with wider educational changes. If consortia are to continue to have value both to their individual members and to their respective LEAs, then the latter need to take them into account when responding to the challenges posed by the ERA, both when reorganising the service and in programmes of staff development, to ensure that account is taken of the needs and characteristics of middle‐management roles which have grown in response to the demands of consortia management.

This paper aims to examine the significance of, difficulties with, and issues driving the change process of curriculum innovations as well as the roles of leadership both in formal and informal structures that could facilitate the process in Hong Kong preschools.

With the aid of an illustrative case study, this paper discusses the implementation of a new assessment system in a local preschool and its complexity of the management of change process.

This paper illustrates the problems of technical and quick‐fix approach to change that disregards the political and cultural variables existing within the school environment. If the approach for change focuses only on the “know‐how” aspect of the new assessment system, it is likely that only some superficial changes would be made and the new practices would hardly be institutionalized as an on‐going part of the school system.

Minimal research on management and leadership in preschools has been conducted in Hong Kong. The illustration of this case study follows other studies in the literature in revealing the important links between leadership and curricular innovations. It is argued that the developing role of leadership in creating structures for collaborative participation and promoting school culture is fundamental in this rapid‐changing educational context. From a wider perspective, sustainable development of the preschool field should not and cannot wholly rely on the efforts of individual schools. The strategic alignment of external support from a central agency and partnership with higher education institutes are the important factors contributing to school improvement.