This chapter explores the nature of the unevenness of student outcomes in rural regions. We present a comprehensive report of variations in student outcomes and gain scores using State-wide testing data for Years 3, 5, 7 and 8 Literacy and Numeracy and Years 10 and 12 English and Mathematics analysed by three indicators of place (Country Area Programs, 'Regionality', and School Transfer Points) and one indicator of poverty (Priority School Funding Programs. The analysis then drills down to variations in outcomes at regional and local school levels in one rural region. Thus schooling outcomes at three levels of spatial organization are analysed: state, regional and School Education Area.

Multigrade teaching was introduced to Bhutan to address the Education for All (EFA) goals. Multigrade schools are those rural schools in which a teacher must teach more than one grade in a class and sometimes all grades from K to 6. The Bhutanese Multigrade Attachment Project (BMAP), involving a phase in Australia and another in Bhutan, was commenced in 1993. Two major changes occurred during the 16 years of implementation following an essentially "one shot" model of continuing professional development (CPD) of the early years. A range of data from these two changes were analysed indicating that the BMAP had had an impact upon the majority of participants. The features of BMAP are identified.

Innovative online mentoring for beginning teachers was trialled in the University of New England (UNE), Australia, Educational Alumni Support Project (EdASP) in 2005. The CIREMS model of online mentoring was developed. CIREMS features were Context awareness, Immediacy and Reflectivity, mentee Election to take part, Mentees could be mentors and a Supportive environment. Analyses of the online mentoring processes indicated four important micro processes, three of which were congruent with the overarching CIREMS model.

Doctoral education in Australia is currently under pressure to become more industry focused. This report discusses the relatively recent experience of offering doctoral education through professional doctorate programs as a contribution to the improvement of doctoral education in Australian universities. The evaluation focused on the extent to which such programs had developed practices for sustaining closer collaboration between universities and industry, through: • a review of the general literatures relating to the role of doctoral research in contributing to the growth of knowledge and innovation; • a multi-method exploration of the range of practices and relationships associated with professional doctorate programs; and • the development of strategies and policy recommendations for optimising doctoral education in Australian universities in terms of industry-focused outcomes. When set against the 800-year history of the PhD, the professional doctorate is a young doctorate, the first being set up in Australia within the last two decades. The nature and status of professional doctorates remains unclear to many, including a number of university administrators of research training, as well as government and industry personnel. The fact that 61 per cent of professional doctorate programs fall under the classification of ‘research’ higher degrees is not widely understood. Moreover, the 131 programs we found to exist in 35 of the 38 Australian public universities, exhibit a wide range of structures and features.

This paper briefly sets out the rationale for the use of action research as a culminating assessment task in an undergraduate ten week internship. Graphic organisers can be effective tools for enhancing thinking and promoting meaningful student learning. But can they be used effectively in an early childhood classroom and by a teacher intern? The major part of the paper is devoted to a report of a classroom-based action research project. The results provided evidence for improved outcomes in early childhood students' writing performance and undergraduate teaching competence.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the evolution of school assessment in Bhutan, briefly, as a background to considering the present and future school assessment issues especially as they relate to quality concerns and educational improvement in Bhutan. A benchmark for Bhutan, the National Educational Assessment (NEA) programme in Bhutan was inspired by a 2002 initiative in South Asia funded by the World Bank. In this paper, we address how the 2003 NEA was developed. Emerging issues are discussed including methods of reporting and the concept of "benchmarking" in three senses of that term. Technical issues are also addressed in the context of the desire to administer another comparative NEA in 2010. Out of these developments, the Bhutan Board of Examinations has developed ideas about expanding access to system-wide assessment data to different levels of stakeholders in order to achieve improvements. A 2x2 matrix is provided identifying four key questions around judgments of educational achievement at two key levels (system and school) within and between these levels. This matrix represents a model of the evolution of assessment in Bhutan. This paper should be of interest to education systems in developing countries that have undertaken or intend to undertake national educational assessment programmes.

The paper reconceptualizes the traditional research at the Bachelors (Hons) and Masters (Hons) levels and so creates new pathways in research from Bachelors through Masters to Doctoral level. The starting point is Gibbons and colleagues (1994) 'new production of knowledge' in which university knowledge is not privileged over knowledge production in other sites such as workplaces. The three-way model of Lee, Green and Brennan (200) for Professional Doctoral education is generalised to the other two levels of university research awards and the portfolio is presented as an important alternative to the dissertation as a research product.

This paper identifies an overarching strategy that consultants can use to focus institutional level development work: the institutional zone of proximal development (IZPD). The paper explicates the IZPD concept following Vygotsky (1978). The case study of distance education course development in tertiary education in Bhutan illustrates the six processes within the IZPD that supported successful implementation. Evidence showed that the consultancy had contributed to the institutionalisation of change. Three implications for consultants using the IZPD are presented. The concept of the IZPD is new to the development literature.

This paper addresses a number of important issues related to establishing a research project by a postgrad student. The paper takes the form of a series of conversations between a student and a supervisor. They correspond to the kinds of conversations that a postgrad and supervisor might have in the early stages of the research process, until the researcher is beginning to gather data. The conversations are based upon the experiences of the writer but none are identifiable situations and the complexities of co-supervision have been largely excluded.