Herein we examine the dominant image of East Asian schools as marked by a darker side of widespread bullying, leading to high rates of youth suicide. First outlining the substantial literature on bullying in the English language, we turn to show how -- paradoxically -- the rates of bullying and suicide are no higher, or in nearly all cases, lower…

The quantity and quality of talented individuals in STEM (science/S, technology/T, engineering/E and mathematics/M) fields contribute to a nation's overall competitiveness. Taiwan and many countries around the world are vigorously promoting the training of STEM professionals and the enhancement of STEM literacy for all as one of the key education…

Previous research findings indicate that young children from East Asia outperform their counterparts from Europe and North America on executive function (EF) tasks. However, very few cross-national studies have focused on EF development during middle childhood. The current study assessed the EF performance of 170 children in grades 2 and 4 from…

The relationships between RE leaders in Catholic education and their schools and their religious communities may be ambiguous. RE leaders often appear disconnected from both 'ordinary' teacher issues and 'ordinary' leadership issues because of their religious responsibilities. In this innovative research project, the authors have explored RE…

Most existing research indicates that working students perform more poorly than do full-time students on standardized achievement tests. However, we know there are wide international variations in this gap. This article shows that national and international contexts help to explain the gap in the academic performance between working and nonworking…

Mathematics educators have had a long standing interest in students' understanding of decimal numbers. Most studies of students' understanding of decimals have been conducted within Western cultural settings. Similar research in other countries is important for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly because it can provide insights that may…

Deictic linking gestures, hand and arm motions that physically embody links being communicated between two or more objects in the shared communicative environment, are explored in a cross-cultural sample of mathematics instruction. Linking gestures are specifically examined here when they occur in the context of communicative analogies designed to…

Enormous variation exists among nations and regions in their inclusive education provisions. In addition to comparisons based on policy documents and figures, in-depth and contextually grounded comparative studies involving qualitative data based on stakeholder experiences are needed, especially between western and Asian regions or nations where…

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model and dimensional comparison theory posit paradoxical relations between achievement (ACH) and self-concept (SC) in mathematics (M) and verbal (V) domains; ACH in each domain positively affects SC in the matching domain (e.g., MACH to MSC) but negatively in the nonmatching domain (e.g., MACH to…

There is a broad interest in narrowing achievement gaps among all groups of students and improving education by scientifically sound methods. On October 25, 2006, the United States Department of Education published new regulations allowing single-sex education in public schools whenever schools think it will improve student achievement. Thus far,…

The aim of this study is to find out what teachers say their primary focus is when planning to teach an object of learning. The study is carried out in two different cultural contexts, Sweden and Hong Kong, and based on the framework of variation theory, which has a two-fold focus, namely both what teachers do and what students learn at school.…

Worldwide, the interest of policy-makers in participating in studies from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has been growing rapidly over the past two decades. These studies offer the opportunity to relate the teaching and…

TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) is an international assessment of mathematics and science at the fourth and eighth grades that has been conducted every four years since 1995, with the most recent assessment in 2011. PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is an international assessment of reading…

This study examined the relationship between students' reading attainment scores and key family environmental factors in Chinese and non-Chinese communities. Six family environmental factors were considered: parents' evaluation of their offspring's early literacy skills, early home literacy activities (EHLA), reading activities involving parents…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of narrative inquiry to contribute to an understanding of immigrant students' educational experience. Research on immigrant students' education is reviewed and the need for detailed examination of these students' experiences in schools, such as is done in a narrative inquiry, is demonstrated.…