From an historical and sociological perspective, ‘integrated care’ has emerged as part of institutional efforts to break up professional fiefdoms, especially of subspecialists entrenched in hospitals, and to reorganise services around clinically integrated pathways and services for the patients. It was the more enlightened part of what I have called the ‘buyers’ revolt’, which occurred in the 1980s when those who had long paid the bills (insurers, governments, employers) became so fed up by the waste, excesses, and variability of services delivered under professional dominance that they started to take forceful action w1x. This book is a masterpiece of historical work and organisational analysis of that revolt at its centre, the San Francisco Bay area.

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Institutional change and healthcare organizations: from professional dominance to managed care

Devolution and Choice in Education, the School, the State and the Market

Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods.Anthony S. Bryk , Stephen W. Raudenbush

Singapore’s remarkable performance in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has placed it among the world’s high-performing education systems (HPES). In the literature on HPES, its ‘secret formula’ for education success is explained in terms of teacher quality, school leadership, system characteristics and educational reform. This article offers an alternative explanation for the education success of Singapore and, in so doing, questions the basic assertions of the HPES literature and, in particularly, the use of PISA results as the prime indicator of the educational performance of a school system. The explanation is informed by a historical perspective on the development of the Singapore education system and based upon a body of empirical findings on the nature of pedagogical practice in classrooms, both of which are vital for understanding the educational performance of Singapore’s education system. The article concludes by addressing the implications of this analysis for educati...

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PISA and high-performing education systems: explaining Singapore’s education success

http://www.alliance4usefulevidence.org/assets/What-is-good-evidence-provocation-paper_Nutley.pdf

What counts as good evidence

Recent findings show that students attending charter schools in the United States achieve at comparable or lower levels to those enrolled in regular public schools, perhaps due to uneven quality and disparities in the levels of resources acquired by charter schools. But little is known as to what state and local factors contribute to disparate levels of resources in the charter school sector. This article examines how local context, the charter school’s organizational form, and state policies may influence material and human resources obtained by charter schools and their capacity to innovate. We find marked differences among charter schools situated in different US states in terms of teacher qualities, student–staff ratios, length of the school day, and the propensity to unionize, drawing on data from the US Schools and Staffing Survey for the 1999/2000 school year. Charter schools rely less on uncredentialed teachers in states that more tightly regulate the sector, and state spending is associated with ...

Disparities in Charter School Resources--The Influence of State Policy and Community.

This paper attempts to discuss how the Singapore Education System is shifting towards student-centred designs and pedagogies, yet retaining a unique Singaporean orientation. It complements the McKinsey report by analysing directives and efforts to understand trade-offs, consequences, and insights for moving forward. The paper uses an ecological view to acknowledge that education systems are complex—historical, contextual, and cultural dimensions shape Singapore’s trajectory. Building on understandings of high-performing systems, Singapore’s trajectory, and informed by education research, the paper distils three shifts (from a systems level of analyses) which are currently on course: (1) hybridising pedagogies; (2) levelling up the base of lower achieving students; and (3) recognising diverse talents. The paper postulates a gradual, evolutionary stance and for continuing dialogue and alignments in the change process. The paper draws implications by proposing mitigating approaches in Singapore’s continuing journey of balancing high academic achievements and twenty first century, inquiry-oriented learning.

An ecological view of conceptualising change in the Singapore Education System

Singaporean students’ performance at international benchmark studies of student achievement has attracted significant global attention. However, while the top performers clearly out-perform their peers in other systems, Singapore’s concern is with levelling up the long tail and ensuring a more equitable performance of students system-wide. This chapter situates Singapore’s PISA performance in its social and historical context and discusses the remarkable progress made since independence in 1965. It also highlights some observations about Singapore efforts in ‘levelling up’ its lower achieving students and ends with three questions for further deliberation.

Singapore’s Performance in PISA: Levelling Up the Long Tail

Chapter 1 Towards Critical Discussions of Scaling up Educational Innovations.- Models of Scaling.- Chapter 2 The role of Innovation in Scaling up Educational Innovations.- Chapter 3 Scaling from the perspectives of policy makers and practitioners from Singapore.- Chapter 4 Increasing the scale and adoption of health innovations: practice models for public health.- Case studies of scaling.- Chapter 5 How educational innovators apply diffusion and scale-up concepts.- Chapter 6 System scaling in Singapore - the STELLAR story.- Chapter 7 Design and implementation of an Educational Innovation in different contexts: A case study of Group Scribbles (scaling to different contexts to use).- Chapter 8 Seeding a curricular innovation from One School to Five Schools: A case study from Singapore.- Chapter 9 Innovation Scale-up of ICT in education in China.- Chapter 10 Pathways to enhance multilevel learning for scaling up systemic ICT-enabled learning innovations - Lessons from 7 European and Asian cases.- International networks for scaling professional development of teachers.- Chapter 11 Scaling up teacher networks across and within European Schools - the case of eTwinning.- Chapter 12 The Knowledge Building International Project (KBIP): Scaling up Professional Development using Collaborative Technology.- Closing Chapter.- Chapter 13 A synthesis: Expanding the reach of education research and reform.

Scaling educational innovations

This special issue discusses how top Asian education systems (namely, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai) continue to reform themselves toward 21st century learning. The papers delve into issues such as systemic structures and mechanisms, leadership, curriculum and assessment, and teachers’ professionalism in transforming students’ learning dispositions, skills, and knowledge. International comparative studies, for example the 2007 and 2010 McKinsey reports, identified factors associated with high quality teaching and learning, and a good education system. These factors relate to students, teachers, classrooms, schools, and systemic issues. Students need to be equipped with 21st century skills, which go beyond knowledge to include values and dispositions (Barber and Mourshed 2009). Quality teachers are essential to enact 21st century learning (McKinsey and Company 2007, 2010; Mourshed et al. 2010). Classroom practices emphasize knowledge building, adapting, and applying knowledge to real-life problems (Barber and Mourshed 2009). Moreover, well-informed school leaders provide teachers with resources and autonomy to design and adapt curricular, teaching, and learning for students (Mourshed et al. 2010). Effective systems continuously adapt to change. Systems are aware of its context as it moves from policies to implementations to achieve quality learners (Barber and Mourshed 2009). This special issue draws attention to policies and strategies that Asian systems have attempted to remain relevant both presently and for the uncharted territories of the future. It examines how education systems are impacted by interrelating contexts of school, societal demands, and history. It tries to understand how enacted reforms have aligned education systems to 21st century education goals. Papers here discuss each system and (in some instances) compare with other systems by tracing specific or combination of issues relating to the:

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Laik Woon Teh

Papers

Disparities in Charter School Resources--The Influence of State Policy and Community.

An ecological view of conceptualising change in the Singapore Education System

Singapore’s Performance in PISA: Levelling Up the Long Tail

Scaling educational innovations

Toward 21st Century Learning: An Analysis of Top Performing Asian Education Systems’ Reforms