Nina Bascia, Alister Cumming, Amanda Datnow, Kenneth Leithwood and David Livingstone This Handbook presents contemporary and emergent trends in educational policy research, in over ?fty chapters written by nearly ninety leading researchers from a number of countries. It is organized into ?ve broad sections which capture many of the current dominant educational policy foci and at the same time situate current understandings historically, in terms of both how they are conceptualized and in terms of past policy practice. The chapters themselves are empirically grounded, providing illustrations of the conceptual implications c- tained within them as well as allowing for comparisons across them. The se- re?exivity within chapters with respect to jurisdictional particularities and c- trasts allows readers to consider not only a range of approaches to policy analysis but also the ways in which policies and policy ideas play out in di?erent times and places. The sections move from a focus on prevailing policy tendencies through increasingly critical and ''outsider'' perspectives on policy. They address, in turn, the contemporary strategic emphasis on large-scale reform; substantive emphases at several levels - on leadership and governance, improving teacher quality and conceptualizing learning in various domains around the notion of literacies and concluding, ?nally, with a contrasting topic, workplace learning, which has had less policy attention and thus allows readers to consider both the advantages and disadvantages of learning and teaching under the bright gaze of policy.

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One.- Globalization and Educational Change: New Policy Worlds.- Marketization in Education: Looking Back to Move Forward with a Stronger Critique.- Multicultural Education in the United States and Canada: The Importance of National Policies.- International Comparative Studies of Education and Large-Scale Change.- A Changed Policy Environment for US Universities.- The Implications of Policy Decisions on Practices in Early Childhood Education.- Policy-Practice Connections in State Standards-Based Reform.- Informed Consent? Issues in Implementing and Sustaining Government-Driven Educational Change.- School District-Wide Reform Policies in Education.- Five Key Factors in Supporting Comprehensive School Reform.- Knowledge Producers and Policymakers: Kissing Kin or Squabbling Siblings?.- Linkages Between Federal, State and Local Levels in Educational Reform.- Educational Governance Reforms: The Uncertain Role of Local School Boards in the United States.- Accountability Policies and Their Effects.- Parent and Community Involvement in Schools: Policy Panacea or Pandemic?.- Democratic Values in Bureaucratic Structures: Interrogating the Essential Tensions.- Approaches to the Funding of Schools and Their Effects on Capacity.- Formulaic Approaches to the Funding of Colleges and Universities.- The UK Policy for School Leadership: Uneasy Transitions.- Educational Leadership in Policy Contexts That Strive for Equity.- Accountable Schools and the Leadership They Need.- The Recruitment and Retention of School Leaders: Understanding Administrator Supply and Demand.- Two.- Teacher Certification Policy: Multiple Treatment Interactions on the Body Politic.- Retaining Teachers in High-Poverty Schools: A Policy Framework.- The Cultural Context of Teachers' Work: Policy, Practice andPerformance.- School Improvement Within a Knowledge Economy: Fostering Professional Learning from a Multidimensional Perspective.- Teacher Informal Learning and Teacher Knowledge: Theory, Practice and Policy.- No Teacher Left Untested: Historical Perspectives on Teacher Regulation.- Teacher Professional Standards: A Policy Strategy to Control, Regulate or Enhance the Teaching Profession?.- Triage or Tapestry? Teacher Unions' Work in an Era of Systemic Reform.- Improving Research-Policy Relationships: The Case of Literacy.- Literacies in Early Childhood: The Interface of Policy, Research, and Practice.- Balanced Elementary Literacy Instruction in the United States: A Personal Perspective.- Evidence-Based State Literacy Policy: A Critical Alternative.- Literacies in Adolescence: An Analysis of Policies from the United States and Queensland, Australia.- Assessing Literacies.- Literacies in Families and Communities.- Literacies and Media Culture.- Technology and Literacies: From Print Literacy to Dialogic Literacy.- Adult Literacy Policy: Mind the GAP.- Shaping Literacy Policy: From Abstract Ideals to Accountable Practices.- Literacy in Developed and Developing Countries.- The Changing Nature of Employment and Adult Learning Policies: Unlocking Creative Forces.- Current Theories of Workplace Learning: A Critical Assessment.- Learning and Work Transition Policies in a Comparative Perspective: Canada and Germany.- Disjunctions in the Supply of and Demand for Education in the Labor Force 19302003: 'Trafficking in Gaps'.- Running Faster to Stay in the Same Place? The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Government Policy for Workplace Learning in Britain.- Improving Gender Equality in Work Organisations by Action Research.- Information and CommunicationTechnologies and Workplace Learning: The Contested Terrain of Legislation, Policies, Programs and Practices.- Recognition of Learning Through Work.- Trade Unions and Changing Practices of Workers' Education.- Expanding Conception of Work and Learning: Recent Research and Policy Implications.- Volunteer Work and Learning: Hidden Dimensions of Labour Force Training.- The other Half (or More) of the Story: Unpaid Household and Care Work and Lifelong Learning.- New Forms of Learning and Work Organization in the it Industry: A German Perspective on Informal Learning.