A Scandinavian perspective on evaluating educational reforms. The essays include: The Research Council of Norway Evaluating Reform 97; Models of Evaluation; and What's Being Done in the Name of Evaluation? Experiences Drawn from the Recent Evaluation of Schooling Reforms in Switzerland.

Evaluation—whether called by this name, quality assurance, audit, accreditation, or others—is an important social activity. Any organization that "lives in public" must now evaluate its activities, be evaluated by others, or evaluate others. What are the origins of this wave of evaluation? And, what worthwhile results emerge from it?The Evaluation Society argues that if we want to understand many of the norms, values, and expectations that we, sometimes unknowingly, bring ...

This is Book 1 of 7 in the Ethnographer's Toolkit, Second Edition.The Ethnographer's Toolkit series begins with this primer, which introduces novice and expert practitioners alike to the process of ethnographic research, including answers to questions such as who should and can do ethnography, when it is used most fruitfully, and how research projects are carried out from conceptualization to the uses of research results. Written in practical, straightforward language, this new edi...

Lecturers, click here to request an e-inspection copy of this textQualitative Research Methods is based on the authors′ highly successful multidisciplinary qualitative methods workshops, which have been conducted for over a decade. In this book the authors propose a ′qualitative research cycle′ that leads students through the selection of appropriate methods, the collection of dat...

Public Relations and Communication Management serves as a festschrift honoring the work of public relations scholars James E. Gruning and Larissa A. Grunig. Between them, the Grunigs have published 12 books and more than 330 articles, book chapters, and various academic and professional publications, and have supervised 34 doctoral dissertations and 105 master’s theses. This volume recognizes the Grunig‘s contributions to public relations scholarship over the past four decades.

Early childhood education is critical for preparing children for success in formal school settings, and as such, is a major concern throughout the world. This volume brings together ground-breaking research in this area to help practitioners, students, policy makers, curriculum designers, and intervention program developers understand the latest ideas and advances in the field.Recent Perspectives of Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada centres on three key themes. ...

Interviews are a frequent and important part of empirical research in political science, but graduate programs rarely offer discipline-specific training in selecting interviewees, conducting interviews, and using the data thus collected. Interview Research in Political Science addresses this vital need, offering hard-won advice for both graduate students and faculty members. The contributors to this book have worked in a variety of field locations and settings and...

Autonomy has become a keyword of language policy in education systems around the world, as the importance of independent learning and new technologies has grown.Now in a fully revised and updated second edition, Teaching and Researching Autonomy provides an accessible and comprehensive critical account of the theory and practice of autonomy. Examining the history of the concept, it addresses important questions of how we can identify autonomy in language learning behaviour...

Doing News Framing Analysis provides an interpretive guide to news frames – what they are, how they can be observed in news texts, and how framing effects are uncovered and substantiated in cultural, group, and individual sites. Chapters feature framing analysts reflecting on their own empirical work in research, classroom, and public settings to address specific aspects of framing analysis. Taken together, the collection covers the full range of ways in which framing has been the...

Policy evaluation is an important and well-established part of the policy process, facilitating and feeding back to promote the ongoing effectiveness of policies that have been implemented or anticipating policies in the making. Environmental policy is a special case, presenting new complexities uncommon to other areas, which standard evaluation tools are ill-equipped to grapple with. It is also an area that is experiencing rapid growth throughout the world and knowledge is now needed at a...

The Future of Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management brings together an outstanding group of public relations scholars and practitioners to consider the indelible theory building in public relations of James E. Grunig and Larissa A. Grunig, who with David M. Dozier, produced the 1992 IABC Excellence Study, a benchmark body of work examining best practices in the public relations field. In this assembled collection, editor Elizabeth L. Toth and the contributors...

The current emphasis on individualised intervention programmes for students with special needs may not only be impractical, but also undesirable. This book compares and contrasts special needs approaches with school effectiveness strategies. The author sets out theories about inclusive schooling that arise out of a detailed scrutiny of practice. The link between theory and practice will be welcomed by many practitioners. With extensive examples from the field to illustrate Ainscow's ideas,...