Open Schooling in the 21st Century

Abstract

The expansion of secondary education is now the world’s most pressing educational challenge. This carefully prepared and thoroughly researched book should inspire policy-makers and educational planners to explore how open schooling can expand secondary education cost-effectively in their jurisdictions. Organised by special theme chapters and case studies, Open Schooling in the 21st Century provides critical information on the wide range of issues affecting open schooling. Using many examples, the book shows how open schooling can be adopted to serve a range of purposes and how it can be delivered through a variety of technologies and approaches. The book also reveals, with its analyses of a diverse group of institutions, how the notion of open schooling can be adapted and applied very differently from one jurisdiction to another. The book’s contributors – educators from around the world with extensive first-hand experience in open schooling – confirm that open schools can provide good-quality secondary education as long as senior policy-makers, bureaucrats and administrators are well informed about the key factors affecting success in open schooling, and that they use this knowledge to plan, implement and monitor their own open school initiatives. // Series formerly called "Perspectives on Teacher Education." Renamed to "Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning."