Organisation and Management of Education: Development and Growth

Abstract

In the last few decades in the Asia-Pacific region and other parts of the world, education was clearly assumed to be the key for economic, social and political developments, and was thus expanded quickly (Fullan, 1998; Lieberman, 1998). Given the limited resources and various kinds of contextual constraints, inevi- tably there are dilemmas and tensions in the efforts of expanding education systems, financing the increasing educational provision, ensuring the accountabil- ity of educational services to the public and improving the effectiveness of learning and teaching during the growth of educational services in the Asia- Pacific countries. Particularly in response to the challenges of globalisation, information technology, international competitions, knowledge-based economy and fast societal developments in the new millennium, more and more issues in educational management, organisation and provision have been raised for discus- sion, debate and research (Chapman, Sackney, & Aspin, 1999). Since the 1990s, there has been numerous educational reforms launched in nearly all countries in the Asia-Pacific region (Cheng & Townsend, 2000). The various waves of education reforms (Cheng, 2001a) have induced a lot of changes in different aspects of organisation and management of education