Colleen McLaughlin is a Professor and Director of Education Innovation at the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. She directs the Education Reform and Innovation team, who work internationally and nationally on aspects of education reform and development. Alan Ruby is a Senior Fellow in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked on education reform projects in over twenty countries.

• Preface; 1. Why focus on implementation in education reform? Alan Ruby and Colleen McLaughlin; 2. Promoting equity in education through system change: some lessons from England and Wales Mel Ainscow; 3. A decade of education reform in Hong Kong Mary James; 4. Reforming a school system – the case of Kazakhstan Colleen McLaughlin, Liz Winter, Olena Fimyar and Natallia Yakavets; 5. Pursuing greater autonomy for Post-Soviet universities: an illustration from Kazakhstan Matthew Hartley and Alan Ruby; 6. School improvement by design in the USA: why it's needed, how it works, and how it can be improved Brian Rowan; 7. Promising practice in government schools in Vietnam Tony McAleavy and Rachael Fitzpatrick; 8. Education reform implementation lessons: a case study of high-performing Singapore Saravanan – S. Gopinathan and Edmund Lim; 9. Qatar's road to education reform: the need for teacher autonomy Asmaa Alfadala, Stavros N. Yiannouka and Omar Zaki; 10. What have we learned about implementation? Colleen McLaughlin and Alan Ruby.

'This book offers governments, policymakers, and academics systematic guidelines and strengthens practitioner knowledge to improve the design and implementation of education reform with regard to local conditions. […] this volume succeeds in advancing the conversation on the effective implementation of reform and creating space for further research.' Yi Liu, Comparative Education