Does empirical evidence or ideology most influence homeschooling policy? It depends. Where empirical research and social experience abound, regulations seem less restrictive but where there is less data or experience policies seem more restrictive and ideologically driven. By comparing Europe and the United States with a look at South Africa,…

This article empirically examines the ways in which Initial Teacher Education in Scotland and Alberta, Canada, seeks to 'get students in', 'get them out and into the workforce', 'get on with teaching future teachers' and how it should 'get on with students'. Using Adams' (2016) policy heuristic, which posits that policy can be discerned in three…

Like most Western nations and regions, Flanders and Québec are characterized by increasing religious diversity and secularization. Accordingly, 'learning to live together' is a main objective in their public education programmes. In spite of this similarity, both regions seem to interpret the concept of 'living together' in a different way and…

England has a 'pre-qualification' system of higher education admissions, where applications and offers are made to young people before exam results are received. While in most cases offers are conditional on achieving a grade target in A Level exams, recent years have seen an exponential growth in 'unconditional offers', where the offer of a place…

This article aims to show the value of the concept of policy trajectory to compare, from a long-term perspective, the transformations of education policies in the context of globalisation. After discussing the scope and limitations of the analyses of the concept in the literature -- descriptive, sequential, metaphorical and building on the works…

Access to education for children with disabilities remains a significant challenge in many countries despite international agreement of its importance. This paper describes results from a comparative analysis of education for students with disabilities in Brazil, Canada, and South Africa with a focus on how differences in disability policies,…

Home education is at an early stage for the public, researchers, media and educational authorities in China. Yet the research relating to the development of home education has been entirely ignored. In particular, the literature focusing on the legal status of home education is negligible in the educational context of China. There is no literature…

In this paper, we reflect on our experiences teaching and working with mathematics teachers in Canada, Ghana, India and Swaziland to explore challenges and opportunities for creating mathematics tasks for peace and sustainability. Our exploration of these experiences is oriented around our interest in embedding peace and sustainability into…

This book critically analyses early school foreign language teaching policy and practice, foregrounding the influence of the socioeducational and cultural context on how policies are implemented and assessing the factors which either promote or constrain their effectiveness. It focuses on four Asian contexts -- Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and…

The recognition of the DP (diploma programme) for university admission is crucial for the development of International Baccalaureate (IB) schools and the expansion of the IB network worldwide. In an era of higher education (HE) massification, accompanied by high failure and dropout rates, intense debates on access to HE are taking place in many…

This report projects Northern Ireland's skills base through to 2030 and compares this to a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The report shows that on current trends Northern Ireland will continue to lag many other countries on a number of measures of learning and skills in 2030. These shortfalls can…

This paper analyzes the curriculum of engineering leadership offerings in Canadian universities. We operationalize an adapted version of Lattuca and Stark's (2011) academic plan framework to analyze key documents of engineering leadership offerings embedded in the engineering curriculum in six different universities. In the process, we generate…

The development of the modern nation-state was an inherently centralising process. Education policy and the institutionalisation of mass public schooling played a key role in this process, facilitating industrialisation and the generation of mass loyalty toward the state. In almost all federal systems, however, education policy remained an…

On May 24, the National Center for Education Statistics released Financial Literacy of 15-year-olds: Results from PISA 2015. The PISA assessment of financial literacy measured students' knowledge and understanding of fundamental elements of the financial world, including financial concepts, products, and risks, and their ability to apply what they…

This article describes teacher education in jurisdictions around the world that have well-developed systems for teacher development. It examines teacher education policies and practices in Australia (with a focus on Victoria and New South Wales), Canada (with a focus on Alberta and Ontario), Finland and Singapore within the context of recruitment,…