Increasingly, it is not just the state that determines the content, delivery, and governance of education. The influence of external actors has been growing, but the boundaries between internal and external have become blurred and their partnerships have become more complex. This book considers how schooling systems are being influenced by the rise of external actors, including private companies, non-governmental organisations, parent organisations, philanthropies, and international assessment frameworks. It explores how the public, private, and third sectors are becoming increasingly intertwined. Introducing new theoretical frameworks, it examines diverse sites – including Cambodia, Israel, Poland, Chile, Australia, Brazil, and the United States – to study the role of policies, institutions, and contextual factors shaping the changing relationships between those seeking to influence schooling.

This open access book addresses the complex interrelations between education policy and education practice developed under new ways of governance. It illuminates the nexuses of the interrelated fields of education policy and education practice including the characteristics of these relationships. The book offers a selection of cases with varied approaches to the question of how different actors and stakeholders are situated in contemporary policy and practice nexuses. The cases presented includes theoretical and conceptual studies; historical studies; ethnographic studies; and studies combining empirical interview data and quantitative data. The book shows what constitutes the contemporary nexuses in education and discusses the need to re-consider how we in education research approach policy and practice in the interface between structure and agency for the future developments in the education policy-practice nexus.

Cooperation and collaboration at the regional level appears to be at an unprecedented high, yet there are still substantial disparities across national levels in education, political, and economic sectors. Authors explain at what scale policy decisions are taken within the policy environment and who has the authoritative allocation of values.

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

This Handbook explores the discourse within the field of educational leadership and management. It provides a clear analysis of the current field as well as older foundational ideas and newer concepts which are beginning to permeate the discussion. The field of educational leadership and management has long acknowledged that educational contexts include a variety of leaders beyond school principals and other school officials such as informal and middle level leaders. By looking at the knowledge dynamic rather than a static knowledge base , this Handbook allows research to be presented in its multidimensional, evolving reality.

"This book brings together new thinking on education’s complex and evolving role in conflict and fragility. The changing nature of conflict, from inter- to intra-state, and with shifting geopolitical power balances, demands a reconceptualization of where education is positioned. Claims that education on its own can be an agent of conflict transformation are disputed. Deliberate attempts at peace education are not without critics and controversies. This collection aims to generate new realism from empirical and reflective accounts in a variety of countries and political contexts, as well as provide innovative methodological approaches to the study of education and conflict. The particular distinctiveness of the volume is the emphasis on ‘contested’ – it includes the debates and disagreements on the many faces of education in conflict, as well as material on teaching controversial issues in fragile contexts. Crucially, it underscores how education itself exists within highly contested projects of state, nation and region building. As well as overview comparative chapters, the collection encompasses a range of specific contexts, geographically and educationally – Algeria, Canada, El Salvador, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Tunisia, UK and US, with settings that include schools, higher education and refugee camps. Focuses range from analyses of education in historical conflicts to contemporary issues such as post Arab Spring transformations. Perennial concerns about religion, colonialism, protest, integration, cohesion, emergencies, globalization and narrative are given new slants. Yet in spite of the debates, a cross-cutting consensus emerges as the crucial need for critical pedagogy and critical theory if education is to make any mark at all on conflict and fragility. "

In spite of the increasing attention attributed to the rise in prominence of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries, few studies have looked at the ways in which broader social expectations with respect to the role of higher education across the BRICS have changed, or not, in recent years. Our point of departure is that, contrary to the conventional wisdom focusing on functionalistic perspectives, higher education systems are not just designed by governments to fulfill certain functions, but have a tendency for evolving in a rather unpredictable fashion as a result of the complex interplay between a number of internal and external factors. In reality, national higher education systems develop and change according to a complex process that encompasses the expectations of governmental agencies, markets, the aspirations of the population for the benefits of education, the specific institutional traditions and cultures of higher education institutions, and, increasingly so, the interests and strategies of the private firms entering and offering services in the higher education market. This basically means that it is of outmost importance to move away from conceiving of "universities" or "higher education" as single, monolithic actors or sector. One way of doing this is by investigating a selected number of distinct, but nonetheless interrelated factors or drivers, which, taken together, help determine the nature and scope of the social compact between higher education (its core actors and institutions) and society at large (government, industry, local communities, professional associations).