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Numerous challenges in education emerge as our technology-driven society rapidly evolves and manifests more exigent requirements from engineering professionals. Higher education, nonetheless, seems to adapt to such requirements at an unequal speed, generating some tensions between industry and higher education institutions. The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences obtained through a process of assessment and redesign of a large enrollment course of programming from which the authors developed a systematic approach for course design/redesign.

A mixed method approach was deployed for data gathering and evaluation, consisting of close-ended surveys, open-ended questionnaires, information matrices and state of the art compilation. Triangulation of the information offered clear data about the necessity of curriculum redesign; therefore, a new programming course curriculum encompassed with relevant necessities in engineering and science was developed.

The authors produced a coherent and dynamic systematic path for assessment and design/redesign of course curriculum, which the authors find extremely helpful to improve negotiation processes inside higher education institutions, as it can be implemented to improve any large enrollment course curricula in engineering and science.

By following the systematic path for assessment and design/redesign of curricula the authors developed, higher education systems could embark more efficiently in the ever-challenging process of adapt their courses and programs to tackle the upcoming demands of our society.

So far, a systematic path for assessment and design/redesign of course curriculum was not published, and it supports the improvement of pedagogical approaches in academic institutions.

Examines the history of educational administration in the USA during the Progressive era (1890‐1940). Using Callahan's Education and the Cult of Efficiency as a starting point, examines school district‐based administrative practices that offered viable alternatives to the business‐oriented, “scientific management” reforms that tended to dominate much of the educational dialogue and innovation of the early twentieth century. Offers cases studies of three superintendents who creatively resisted the ideology of efficiency or who skillfully utilized administrative structures to buttress instructional reforms. Using archival records and other historical sources, first examines Superintendent A.C. Barker in Oakland, California between 1913 and 1918 and Superintendent Charles Chadsey in Denver, Colorado during the years 1907‐1912. Then analyzes the tenure of Jesse Newlon during his superintendency in Denver from 1920 to 1927. Using the conception of “authentic leadership” and the frameworks of the ethics of care, critique, and professionalism, argues that these administrators demonstrated how leaders grounded in notions of scholarly skepticism, democratic engagement, and the compassionate care of children were sometimes able to avoid the excesses of the ideology of “efficiency”.

Through the study of the Liberal Studies reform in Hong Kong, this paper aims to investigate to what extent the curriculum reform makes a difference in the achievement gap between middle-class and lower-class students. Specifically, it examines the variation of the “class gap” between Liberal Studies and other traditional, core subjects in terms of the public examination results, and the major mediators underlying the class effect on the results.

Data from a survey of 1,123 students from 15 schools who studied the new curriculum between 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 in Hong Kong were analyzed using the hierarchical multiple regression models.

Students’ class backgrounds, mainly indicated by parental education, continue to make a substantive contribution to the achievement gap.

Given that Liberal Studies’ examination is compulsory for university entrance, the sensitivity of this reform to existing educational inequalities has a significant impact on students’ chances of entering local universities.

Sociologists have long observed the class gap in education, and this paper adds an important exogenous source, a curriculum change, to the analysis. The Liberal Studies reform has provided a unique opportunity to examine the potential effect of a curriculum change on the class gap. In addition, in view of the absence of empirical evidence in this topic, this paper is an effort to build the evidence base for understanding the outcomes of the reform.

Most comparative education research has included investigation of dimensions of educational reform but not all research in the field has focused concertedly on reform in relation to the realities in practice. In the latter half of the 20th century comparativists underscored the need to investigate implementation issues, not just reform policies, as had often been the case in earlier comparative research, since time had shown that political processes did not always equate with educational outcomes. Reforms can be thwarted altogether, significantly modified or mediated in practice, embraced with qualification, or differentially implemented across regions or levels within a given country. Reform implementation might produce intended and unintended change (for better or for worse); or no change at all might be the outcome; or change might occur ahead of reform. Some of the most fascinating findings in comparative research are dichotomous considerations of change such as policy versus practice, ideal versus real, de facto change versus de jure change, intended and unintended outcomes of reform, grass-roots (bottom–up) versus centralized (top–down) reforms, and de facto change legitimized-after-the-fact through reform or new policy.

The purpose of this paper is to document the process of change of the admission tests in a developing country, Chile focusing on equity issues, particularly on the outcomes for test takers from marginalized groups.

The paper deals with equity issues associated to the change in admission tests to higher education in Chile. It addresses the omission of a validity framework, the ensuing implementation problems, and the unfulfilled expectations that the new tests would increase access to higher education for marginalized groups. The paper is built as a case study, using media accounts and archival data to document the process of change.

Three years after the debut of the new tests, the expected outcomes of increased access to higher education were not met. The performance gap in the admission tests between the underprivileged group of applicants from public municipal high‐schools and the applicants from private schools widened.

Two limitations of the study were the restricted access to primary information and the peripheral involvement of the authors had in the controversy over the new tests. To control for the potential bias in the discussion of the issues, the authors consulted with local and foreign experts not involved in the controversy in order to validate judgments and the interpretation of data and events.

An understanding of the overslights and flaws in the process of change can serve to inform national policy debates in countries where educational reforms are under way.

Purpose and methodology – Focusing on the policy contexts of gender education in Taiwan, this chapter uses data from interviews with elite policymakers and policy documents to examine how feminist activists sought to legitimatize gender equity in education in the wake of the comprehensive social and educational reforms of the 1990s and early years of this decade.

Findings – The embedding of gender in education did not follow a smooth path in terms of policy formulation. Feminist activists drove the process of reform by retaining control over the naming of the legislation, and its wording, thus preserving the language and imperatives of gender equity.

Social implications – In this chapter, I examine the formation of the Gender Equity Education Law, detailing the struggles, contentions, and negotiations that underlay the eventual approval of gender reform in education.

Originality/value of chapter – The chapter contributes significantly by identifying the necessity to recognize the nature of the state and its relations with society in order to research gender in education in Taiwan.

This study aims to analyze the external quality assurance (EQA) strategies of Technological Institutes (TIs) in Mexico, between 2010 and 2020. For this purpose, this study tracks sectoral reforms and institutional adaptation processes toward fulfilling accreditation indicators. This study considers accreditation as an emergent strategy for the governance and quality improvement of the subsystem, historically oriented towards contributing to social equity and national development projects. This study also examines the links between evaluation, quality assurance and the restructuring of public, technological higher education.

This study performs a state-of-the-art and exploratory study. This study explores the relationship between quality assurance, non-traditional institutions and regulation in Mexico. This study covers an issue that has been absent from research into the technological sector, particularly research into autonomy and leadership within its institutions. This study obtains qualitative information on those issues through interviews and two focus groups.

Mechanisms such as regulatory schemes for the internal reform of TIs and sub-systemic prominence within the overall educational system show limitations owing to the inadequacy of accreditation indicators in accounting for the conditions in which TIs operate. To address this shortcoming and to aid TIs in accreditation endeavors, this study analyzes some features of this adaptive process that enable successful (student profiles, competitive admission criteria, teacher recruitment).

The main limitation is that this paper reviews a sole country and presents just one case study. Other research on other higher education sub-systems can complete the analysis. In sum, there has been a lack of analysis of accreditation topics in Mexico, in the nontraditional institutions.

This study provides a diagnosis of barriers to the participation of TIs in rankings and accreditation mechanisms, and their repercussions on management issues, governance patterns and reforms.

This study outlined some internal obstacles linked with centralized model of conduction (data for monitoring, consensus on priorities, capabilities and financing) and external factors (shortages of assurance quality framing and institutional profiles, satisfaction with the process).

This study explores relationships between quality assurance, non-traditional institutions and regulation in Mexico, attending a lacking point in the research on the technological sector and autonomy/leadership of its institutions.

The Czech case sheds light on the processes of curriculum making inthe post-socialist context. To explain the relationship between the macro and micro levels of curriculum development, Graeber's concept of interpretive labour is used. In the Czech Republic, from the very first days of the Velvet Revolution (November 1989), groups of citizens and teachers demanded profound change in school education but the new conservative-liberal government preferred piecemeal steps.An alternative route to radical school reform was proposed at the meso level by an alliance of health psychologists and progressive teachers, using the know-how of the World Health Organization. Schools that voluntarily joined the Healthy Schoolnetwork were expected to restructuretheir core processes by an approach similar to school-based curriculum development. This change model was adopted at the macro level,when the Social Democrats formed a government in 1998. The new Education Act mandated that each school had to develop its own curriculum using the new national framework. The analysis of policy documents paving the way for this reform, however, showsa sequence of unfulfilled plans and promises. Almost all independent evaluations have found that the essential goals of the reform have remained unfulfilled, as schools mostly created their curriculaby, for example, formally recycling the old national syllabi.As curriculum making occurs across different levels, the failed curricular reform resulted in a blame game among thelevels(the ministry, curricular agency, inspectorate, school leaders, teachers and others),with no actor accepting theirshare of the responsibilityand probably considering any lessons for future curriculum revisions.

The aim of this chapter is twofold: first, it will discuss the roots and the aims of the curriculum reform launched in Portugal in 2017, suggesting that it shows the influence of international policy borrowing. Secondly, it aims to present and to discuss the trends that this reform is putting in place, highlighting some successful practices as well some misconceptions and controversial practices. To accomplish such aims, it follows the analytical framework that inspires this book, namely the approach that understands curriculum making as a dynamic process of interactions between different layers of the system, emphasizing the meso and the micro layers of curriculum decision-making. The focus on the experimental period that this chapter narrates is also an opportunity to analyse dynamics among the layers of curriculum making.