National culture determines educational culture. The educational culture characteristics of each country will be demonstrated through the awareness of education, the way the educational apparatus is organized, and the way that education deals with the crisis in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic on a global scale. The study uses structural…

Education reform efforts stemming from the Programme in International Student Achievement have strengthened in recent years, particularly in response to the growth of global references societies -- high achieving educational jurisdictions such as Finland, Hong Kong-China, and more recently Estonia and Singapore. Despite political rhetoric,…

Active learning has emerged as a means of developing generic employability skills that enable students to prepare for an uncertain future. In this context, many universities have encouraged their instructors to practice active learning. While some scholars indicate challenges with adopting this approach, few empirical studies have examined…

This paper discusses human relationships with the natural world in Japanese educational policy. Based on two case studies, we argue that policy must recognize the cultural and spiritual ties that people in Japan have fostered in order to live well, which this paper considers to be part of "re-wilding education policy." We briefly review…

This article examines a case of what Olssen et al. (2004) call "managerial oppression" set in a faculty of international studies of a Japanese university. Japanese universities have, in recent times, been facing the financial pressures of a falling birthrate and dwindling enrolments. To remain solvent, some universities have had to…

In recent years, Japanese universities have sought to have a greater number of faculty courses taught in English, where traditionally Japanese has been the medium of instruction. This article begins with an overview of the literature discussing Japan's responses to the spread of English, and philosophies and ideologies influencing the…

Japan is known to be a country that manicures its socio-cultural borders. In this article I will examine discourses regarding openness, closedness and cultural diversity in relation to policies and practices that draw heavily on mythologies of English language as an inroad to greater openness and diversity. To do this I will examine two English…

The Entrepreneurial University is a failed idea. This is not to disparage the entrepreneurial activities of faculty, graduates and students. Neither is it to criticise industry-sponsored research and co-authorship. University research and higher education have a role in innovation. However, if entrepreneurialism is institutionalised as a policy of…

The study scrutinizes the rationale behind higher education policy change in England and Japan, giving attention to stakeholders' perspective and legitimacy, policy network, and policy sphere. It argues that change in higher education policy in England and Japan towards being more market-oriented in the 1980s (England) and the 1990s (Japan) can…