The Global Challenge of Educational Reform

Three vectors describe the research about the global challenge of educational reform (Shirley, J Educ Change 21(3):385-392, 2020). These vectors address fundamental questions within the field: Who is doing the work and how are they supported? How can reform that is successful in one realm be both sustained within that context and travel to other contexts? Who benefits? These sticky questions are not rhetorical, and yet they also do not have an answer. In spite of decades of practice and research, much of the field of educational reform remains in flux. This chapter builds upon such scholarship, describing the global challenge of educational reform, briefly tracing the history of reform over the last 20 decades in order to frame the understanding of educational reform, and then outlining the obstacles that have been met along the way. These waves of reform and across the waves the vectors of change play a strong role in making sense of the past and highlighting the global challenge of educational reform work. The chapter then describes the challenges of the present moment, including but not limited to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on reform efforts.