Educational reform has nowhere been more concerned with "putting education to work" than in Australia, where national policies seek to measure educational systems in terms of international competitiveness, labor market flexibility, productivity and skills formation, to name a few. This "economic rationalist" experiment, evidenced increasingly worldwide, has developed largely from policy-making and budget-management initiatives, with little or no involvement among teachers themselves. The authors of this volume present the testimony of practicing teachers, who speak for themselves about the difficulty of translating management directives into classroom programs.
