This book identifies three types of influential forces that pose challenges to innovations: socio-cultural dynamics, teacher individuality, and local circumstances. It uses languages, cultural traits, and intellectual heritages in the Asia-Pacific region as an example to show the resistance to Western-based pedagogies due to disparities between…

Globalization affects all the areas of the world economy, nations, countries, institutions and people (Armstrong, 2007; Suarez-Orozco, 2004). Meaning of this complex phenomenon is understood differently by leaders and the people involved in activities related to global economies. Higher education institutions such as universities are in the midst…

The list of recognized creators is constantly changing with the passage of time. An up-to-date list of recognized Chinese creators emerges from a survey of a large sample of Chinese students in various places in China. To understand the sustainability of the creators' fame, this study examines how the creators' personal characteristics affect…

High-stakes tests have been employed widely to engineer curriculum innovation, or achieve intended washback in education. But our understanding of the role of high-stakes tests as an agent for change is limited due to the small number of empirical studies available on this issue. This paper reports on a washback study which focuses on the writing…

China entered a new historical era after the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution. Reform and opening up to the outside have become basic national policies. Acting on the need to reform and open up, a directive on increasing the number of students sent for studies abroad was issued in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping. These policies became an integral part…