Management and implementation of education reform policies: Challenges and world best practices

In response to the challenges and impacts of globalization, high technology, economic transformation, international competitions and local developments in the new century, educational reforms have become necessary for most countries in the world. In the past 15 years, numerous reforms and initiatives have been conducted in many countries to promote new learning for preparing the future of their new generation. Unfortunately, many educational reforms with good intentions and huge resources investment have been found ineffective and unsustainable if not totally failed. One of major reasons for this is the poor management and implementation of education reform policies at the various levels of the education system. Drawing the experiences from international trends and waves of educational reforms, this presentation aims to inform the policy-makers, education planners, education officers and school leaders in the United Arab Emirates about the challenges and world best practices in reforming education. In particular, the presentation will (a) Introduce an international lesson on the emerging educational reform syndromes across the Asia-Pacific Region and beyond, and draw implications for managing negative impacts and preventing failures during implementation of parallel reform policies; (b) Illustrate a holistic approach to management and planning of teachers’ sustainable development for education reform and policy implementation, with reference to this international lesson and the world’s best performing educational systems; and (c) Elaborate what best strategies to be practiced in implementation and management of education reform policies depend on what paradigms of education reforms to be employed; and explain why a paradigm shift from 1st and 2nd waves towards the 3rd wave is needed if educational reforms are effectively aimed at students’ new learning and lifelong development for the future.