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Attempts to reform educational policies and practices have been increasing in recent decades. Since the early 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union have engaged in significant efforts to improve and/or restructure their educational systems. Analyses and contrasts these efforts in terms of the reform goals, philosophies, procedures, outcome criteria and personnel practices for each country. An assessment of the success of the reform effort is provided.

More than five years have passed since A Nation at Risk was published in 1983 by then‐Secretary of Education Terrance Bell's National Commission on Excellence in Education. Those years have seen the publication of an enormous body of both primary material, composed of research reports, essays, and federal and state reform proposals and reports; and secondary material, composed of summaries and reviews of the original reform reports and reports about effective programs that are based on reform recommendations. This annotated bibliography seeks to identify, briefly describe, and organize in a useful manner those publications dealing with K‐12 education reform and improvement. The overall purposes of this article are to bring organization to that list, and also to trace relationships and influences from the federal initiatives to the states and professional associations, and from there to the school districts and individual schools.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze critically the evolution of educational reform in Thailand. Three major phases are identified. The special focus of the paper is an assessment of the third reform which began with the passage of the Office of the National Education Commission (ONEC) (2002).

The methodology for the study is mixed methods including document analysis, direct participant observation, and compilation of major statistical performance indicators from diverse sources.

The success of the most recent reform has been clearly mixed. Major structural and legal changes have occurred but overall system performance remains disappointingly low, despite large Thai educational expenditures as a percent of national budget and the presence of much impressive educational leadership talent. The paper identifies what is called the “Thai educational paradox”. The essence of the paradox is Thailand’s failure to achieve its educational potential. The paper identifies key factors explaining the paradox.

The paper has significant theoretical, policy, and practical implications. From a theoretical perspective, the study confirms the persistence of strong regional disparities and a lack of fiscal neutrality associated with a neoliberal model of capitalistic development. From a practical policy perspective, it is imperative for Thailand to improve the overall quality of its educational system and to reduce regional disparities. There have been numerous studies of each of Thailand’s three phases of reform, but this paper’s original contribution is its presentation of a historical, interdisciplinary, and integrated perspective on the evolution of educational reform and the many obstacles associated with its implementation.

This paper aims to analyse the reform syndrome, bottle‐neck effects and their impacts on teachers and school education in the last ten years and highlight the direction of new developments.

The paper examines educational reforms in Hong Kong in the last decade.

Echoing the international trends of educational reforms, Hong Kong, as an international city, has initiated a series of educational reforms in the past decades. The experiences of educational reforms in Hong Kong may provide a good case for understanding the dynamics of educational reforms and drawing theoretical and practical implications for research, policy formulation and implementation not only in Hong Kong but also in other international communities.

From the analysis of the reform syndrome, particularly the bottle‐neck effect, there should be seven key aspects for policy‐makers, educators and stakeholders in Hong Kong to address the emergent key issues in educational reforms and work for the further development of their education system in the coming few years.

Some studies have claimed that Chinese thinker Hu Shi (or Hu Shih) received and responded to John Dewey's educational ideas only at a theoretical level and did little for education at a practical level. This paper reexamines Hu's reception of Dewey's ideas with a focus on how he used those ideas to solve China's educational and social problems during the late 1910s and 1920s.

This paper draws upon what Schriewer (2012) has called “theories of reception.” Rather than focusing on the international dissemination of ideas and knowledge, this approach emphasizes the reception of foreign ideas from the perspective and needs of the receiver, interpreter and/or reader who apprehends such ideas within a particular socio–cultural context.

This paper finds that Hu not only received — and examined — Dewey's educational ideas in a systematic way, but also used them pragmatically to reform China's systems of education as part of the New Culture Movement after 1919.

This research offers a new understanding of Hu's reception of Dewey's educational ideas. It shows that Hu was not merely a “thinker” in the field of education but also a “doer” who sought to apply Dewey's ideas in practice. This new view allows us to reevaluate Hu's role in the modernization of Chinese education.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the implementation of educational reform processes by applying the concept of social innovation. The paper proposes a model of social innovation and test its applicability in the context of Estonian vocational education reform using two case studies of the school re-organization as an example.

A case study approach has been applied in the empirical study. Different data collection methods have been used including semi-structured interviews with the various change actors, observations and analysis of written documents.

The integrated model of social innovation proved to be a fruitful analytical tool. By focusing on five central aspects – the trigger of change, central change agents, social mechanisms facilitating the adoption of change, implications and social gains – it was possible to explain two school re-organization processes and the reasons behind their success or complications.

The analysis of the cases outlined some lessons that can be learned for the future planning and implementation of school reforms. School changes are more easily adopted if actors experience it as useful and rational, school staff are involved in the process as early as possible and the adoption is facilitated by building certain social mechanisms and network structures into the policy implementation process.

The paper makes a contribution to the literature on educational reform by applying the concept of social innovation. Up until now, the concept of social innovation has remained rather underused to explain the process of implementing and adopting reforms, and in particular, it is rarely used in the context of analyzing educational reforms.

This study aims to gain better understanding of the perceptions comprehensive school principals and chief education officers have about the implementation of school reform and the means they use to facilitate the development of such.

This research project was carried out using a systemic design research approach. Open‐ended questionnaires provided the data for the study and these were completed by educational leaders operating in local school districts.

The results demonstrated that pedagogy was emphasized most often as the core of school reform by principals but chief education officers considered technical and financial factors more often as the critical core of educational reform. Nevertheless, both groups had quite similar ideas on how to promote school development.

The findings reflect the Finnish educational system and capture only two levels of leadership within the system. Future research ought to focus on studying school reforms within different school systems as a complex of correlated events, processes, strategies, interactions and qualities.

To be able to achieve a successful and sustainable school reform more attention must be devoted to creating and activating collaborative learning environments, not only for pupils and teachers, but also for educational leaders at all levels of school administration.

The study adds to an understanding of the often‐mentioned gap or conflict in perceptions and beliefs between different actors in an educational system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of teachers toward national reform in education according to the reform stage (Initiation, Implementation or Institutionalization) attained in their school. The study aim to examined: How do teachers perceive the current reform?; Is there a correlation between teachers' perceptions and reform stage?; To what extent are teachers' perceptions affected by school's mechanisms and school's readiness?

The research methodology is quantitative. Teachers (N = 288) completed a written questionnaire. One-way ANOVA was used to investigate teachers' perceptions of the reform and its contributions to school effectiveness and to teachers' working conditions according to reform stage, while controlling for managerial position, teaching experience and school level. Multivariate modeling was used to examine the relationships between the variables.

Teachers' overall attitudes toward the changes associated with the education reform lay between moderately negative and neutral. Reform was perceived to have made a greater contribution to school effectiveness than to teacher working conditions. School readiness for reform and the presence of school mechanisms supporting reform explained much (41%) of the variance in teachers' attitudes. Teachers holding leadership roles and those whose schools were in the Institutionalization stage exhibited more positive attitudes toward the reform and perceived it as having improved their working conditions to a greater extent than those without leadership roles or whose schools were in the Initiation or Implementation stages, respectively.

Teachers' attitudes toward reform have not previously been examined in the context of reform stage.

The 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.

Two 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.

In conclusion, the authors highlight four takeaway lessons of Chinese educational reforms.

This is an original discussion of educational reforms in China in the contexts of decentralization and marketization.

The ongoing challenge to sustain educational reforms requires a learning process through which doubt is induced as a means of fostering productive school change. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of doubt as well as the doubting process and its importance to the school community, particularly with regard to educational reforms.

After discussing the notions of doubt and the doubting process in the context of school reform, collective doubting in school administration is presented, accompanied by empirical illustrations.

Whereas existing change management literature acknowledges resistance to change as a negative phenomenon, doubt and doubting – questioning the taken-for-granted need for reform and the way the reform should be carried out – is conceptualized as a positive and constructive phenomenon, a source for collective learning. The paper presents limitations, implications, and avenues for future research regarding the doubting process in the context of school reform.

The collective doubting perspective has been sorely under investigated in the educational context. The constructive reform framework of collective doubting may help schools and policy makers develop and sustain educational reforms to foster continuous growth within students and practitioners alike.