Background: Over the past few decades, higher education institutions worldwide have experienced substantial changes, including: massification, internationalisation and increasing demands for exceptional instructional quality and research quantity in environments that have also seen heightened competition for students, faculty and resources.…

Background: Small cohorts of pre-service teachers (PSTs) have been successfully undertaking teaching practicums in a range of international settings for more than 40 years, as part of their initial teacher education studies. Most research into these international teaching practicums (ITPs) has concentrated on the benefits for western PSTs and…

Background: In contrast to the top-down government-designated school choice programmes in many countries, e.g. in the UK and USA in particular, school choice in the Chinese context is a bottom-up movement initiated by parents and is characterised by the payment of a substantial "choice fee" to the preferred school, and by competition by…