In most Western countries, girls outperform boys in academic engagement, scholastic achievement, and school completion. In the current study, researchers assessed the developmental trajectories of European French and North African French boys' (N = 549; M[subscript age] = 11.9 years) perceptions of girls' and boys' ability to succeed in school.…

Introduction: The prevalence rates of bullying vary significantly across countries and continents. Specifically, UNESCO estimates that the prevalence rates vary from 22.8% (CentralAmerica) to 48.2% (Sub-Saharan Africa). Recently these differences among countries andregions have been attributed to culture- and country-level variables. Thus, the…

This article explores the link between the OECD TALIS 2013 survey's framework for defining the ideal teacher and national educational goals by focusing on the teacher self-efficacy items, using cross-country comparisons. Surprisingly, cross-country analysis of the TALIS 2013 data combined with World Value Survey data about Desired Child Qualities…

International students experience unique challenges that place them at risk for academic misconduct violations, including language, academic expectations, cultural differences, academic preparedness, and policy understanding. Academic misconduct issues can significantly risk student success, leaving international students especially susceptible to…

This paper examines physics and mathematics textbooks published in France at the end of the 1950s and at the beginning of the 1960s for children aged 11-15 years old. It argues that at this "middle school" level, textbooks contributed to shape cultural representations of both disciplines and their mutual boundaries through their contents…

The challenges of securing educational change and transformation, at scale, remain considerable. While sustained progress has been made in some education systems (Fullan, 2009; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009) generally, it remains the case that the pathway to large-scale, system improvement is far from easy or straightforward. While large-scale…

Educational policies and practices are influenced by cultural, political, and economic factors, and this is also true of specialized educational approaches such as gifted education. Factors such as a country's cultural tendency toward egalitarianism or meritocracy, whether the political system is centralized or decentralized, and the degree to…

This paper focuses on the relationship between rational beliefs, culture and agency in formal school settings. This relationship is analysed in the context of the adoption of technological innovations. Interviews and focus groups with 39 secondary teachers from England and other European countries were carried out. The analysis highlights a number…

The papers in this volume offer a sampling of contemporary efforts to update the portrayal of study abroad in the applied linguistics literature through attention to its social and cultural aspects. The volume illustrates diversification of theory and method, refinement of approaches to social interactive language use, and expansion in the range…

This paper focuses on teachers of secondary level religious education in England, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. It presents a study of the teachers' perceptions of and responses to the diversity within their classes, in relation to their professional role and their personal and professional biographies. The study employed…

This long-awaited synthesis approaches the past three centuries with an eye to highlighting the importance of significant schools, as well as important women educators in the emergence of secondary education for girls. At the same time, each contributor pays careful attention to the specific political, cultural, and socio-economic factors that…

The title echoes the well-known phrase "the idea of the university", and European universities have always been seen as institutions with a strong international dimension, developing according to common patterns. In their case, it was the "Humboldtian" model embodied in the University of Berlin founded in 1810 which prevailed.…

This volume contains papers submitted to the 12th Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES), held in Sofia and Nessebar, Bulgaria, in June 2014, and papers submitted to the 2nd International Partner Conference, organized by the International Research Centre 'Scientific Cooperation,' Rostov-on-Don,…