This policy analysis will explore the prevalence and purpose of compulsory practical English courses for students across all faculties in universities in Japan. Special attention will be given to English courses taught in two non-English major colleges within a large private Japanese university in Western Japan, which since their inception have…

As community-based global learning (CBGL) programs become more common on college/university campuses and utilize the UN's Sustainable Development Goals to guide programmatic outcomes, open-access evaluation instruments that both benchmark and effectively measure programmatic enhancements over time are needed. The 147-item Community Engagement and…

This paper reviews an educative leadership model for reorganizing educational systems and institutions that was proposed in Australia during the 1990s. It compares this model to contemporary and international research findings. The analysis acknowledges the complexity of reorganization, considering the dynamics of systems and societies that impose…

The physical education (PE) system is a consequential social determinant of pediatric health and well-being. Granting selective achievements, sub-optimal PE outcomes for school-aged children as well as teachers necessitate improvement models and redesign initiatives. This agenda depends on knowledge about the malleable social determinants of the…

This article reviews the history of the measure of socio-economic status in PISA and identifies theoretical underpinnings of the index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS). It then highlights multiple changes in the instruments and scaling methods used by PISA over time, and suggests ways of resolving the tensions behind some of these…

This article emerged through the author's involvement with the University of Victoria's Investigating Quality in Early Learning Environments project in British Columbia. During an eight-month internship, the author had the opportunity to collaborate with community facilitators in the province; participate in monthly learning-circle discussions…

Eminent historian and educator Larry Cuban provides a thorough examination of, and challenge to, past and present definitions of what constitutes educational success in the US. Cuban argues that in the history of American education, standards of achievement and inadequacy--as well as the reform efforts issuing from them--have been neither stable…

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the respects in which private schools are unfair, and why they pose a threat to the well-being of not only those who are excluded on financial grounds, but to democratic equality and social cohesion in general. The shortcomings associated with relying on a form of educational provision that is merely…

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a survey method for hidden populations and, as such, it offers a suitable approach for sampling the homeless. Surprisingly, the practical use of RDS in surveying homeless populations has only sporadically been described in the professional literature so far, and the specifics of using RDS for sampling this group…

Public debates in the Netherlands assume there is an inherent tension between the traditional task of the imam and his tasks in the secularized Dutch society. Studies of the effect of age and generation on religiosity report that intense religious changes are taking place among second-generation migrants. But the direction of this change is…

This paper is about Catholic subjectivity and teacher education. We explore multiple notions of Catholic subjectivity drawing from their Korean, Irish American, and Filipino-Polish heritages. Lived religion and memory writing are conceptual and methodological foundations of this paper. We examine multiple meanings of Catholic subjectivity via…

This research explores how the material environment in kindergarten frames social practices and everyday life and how change may affect pedagogy. Data were drawn from an ethnographic study conducted in a large, newly established kindergarten in Norway. The analyses focus on one conversation between two educators and the head of the kindergarten.…

This paper seeks to take advantage of the concept of emotional capital to analyse how class is lived out through a critical educational failure by referring to the experiences of 64 community-college students in Hong Kong from a longitudinal qualitative study. Arguably an analysis of the emotions of middle-class and working-class respondents and…

The aim of this paper is to examine key change vectors shaping the undergraduate curriculum in the third decade of the twenty-first century. The paper begins by outlining selected definitions, foundational theories and conceptual frameworks underpinning this analysis of the undergraduate curriculum and its influences. Three key external forces…

This paper considers the construction of an 'ideal' level of female education in China by reflecting on the social phenomenon of 'leftover women', and the perpetuation of this stigma by both Chinese state media. It contributes an in-depth engagement with the educational dimensions of 'leftover women' through innovative discourse analysis that…