Past research on digital games and virtual worlds suggests that these platforms provide multiple benefits for language learning, including positive effects on motivation and opportunities for authentic learner interaction. Despite this, adoption of these platforms in classrooms appears largely nonexistent. We provide a review of research on the…

Contributions from and innovation in science and technology over many decades have resulted in dramatic improvements to American lives, including enhanced living standards and life expectancy, better access to information and connectivity across the globe, and increased access to and affordability of consumer goods. The analysis in this report is…

This book examines a wide range of innovations in language learning and teaching in Japan. Each of the chapters describes the impetus for a change or new development in a particular context, from early childhood to adult learning, details its implementation and provides an evaluation of its success. In doing so, they provide a comprehensive…

Student mobility to and among higher education systems in Asia has reached unprecedented levels. In particular, inbound and outbound student mobility creates twin challenges--growing diversity in host countries and brain drain and circulation for sending countries--that have significant implications for growing intra-regional mobility,…

Innovative behavior can be described as a process in which new ideas are generated, created, developed, applied, promoted, realized, and modified by employees to benefit role performance. Various reasons, such as rapid technological and social changes in society, underline the necessity for innovative behavior of employees and certainly of…

Virtual environments have the potential to be an important teaching tool for emotionally sensitive issues capable of producing a sense of presence, perspective-taking and introspection in users in a risk-free, rapid feedback experience. In designing such experiences, it is essential that users are regularly engaged in a collaborative design…

With the growth of English worldwide there have been numerous calls for a paradigm shift from teaching English as foreign language to teaching English as an international language (EIL). While there is a growing body of conceptual literature for teaching EIL, the voices of teachers remain severely underrepresented in this movement. As such,…

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…

In a world where technology has become pervasive in our lives, the notion of IT integration in education practice is losing its significance. It is now more appropriate to discuss transforming pedagogy where technology is not considered a tool anymore but part of what we are. To advance this hypothesis, an enterprising, student-directed approach…

This case study examines student perceptions of the experiential value of a work placement carried out as part of a languages degree programme. The data for the case study consists of a corpus of 67 reports submitted from 2011 to 2015, reflecting on placements carried out in Europe, Japan, the UK and the US. The data offers a student view of the…

This article examines how two core factors--strategic and entrepreneurial dynamics--influence research and development (R&D) investment in new technology-based firms (NTBFs) using data from a questionnaire survey conducted in Japan. Among the strategic dynamics, it is found that joint R&D projects with universities have a positive,…

This article describes an innovation in the teaching and learning of vocabulary in English as a Foreign Language classes. Whereas vocabulary coverage in classrooms and textbooks traditionally focuses on lists of target words in printed form, this article promotes the notion of "aural vocabulary" as an important part of…

In order to motivate ESL students and engage them in different tasks effectively, it is necessary to make the tasks novel to the students. As one possible way of introducing novelty in the course, films could be used advantageously. In this study, a writing course integrated with videos of movies and cultural festival of different regions of the…

Since the late 1980s, the production of PhDs has become a much-discussed political issue, and the reforms and tensions surrounding this category of graduates have gathered momentum. Vocational fields and the contents of PhD education have evolved everywhere, partly because, as academic competition has intensified, the American "graduate…

This volume contains selected papers submitted to the 20th Jubilee Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES), conducted virtually in June 2022. The 20th BCES Conference theme is "Towards the Next Epoch of Education." The theme is focused on problems, discussions, changes, solutions, and…