Craft education in both Finland and Iceland originated over 140 years ago and was influenced by the Scandinavian Sloyd pedagogy. Since then, the subject has moved away from craft and towards technology, with the aim being to increase students' technological abilities. In the beginning, the subject largely focused on the students copying artefacts,…

The article discusses an East/West divide in Europe in university knowledge production. It argues that the communist and post-communist legacies in the four major Central European economies studied (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic) matter substantially for educational and research systems. The differences in university…

Service-learning as a popular term refers to an educational model that combines academic study with social activism and civic service. However, some countries, such as China, use different terms. This article explores the differences and commonalities between service-learning in the USA and social practice in China in the following areas:…

For almost half a century from the early 1960s Martin Trow was the most persistent American commentator on British higher education. He analysed the main reports from Robbins to Dearing, developed and applied a language for discussing common problems amongst different systems, and focused on the uncertain progress of the UK to mass higher…

In this study, international recommendations for history education issued by UNESCO and the Council of Europe are compared with the construing of history in national guidelines, teachers' perceptions and the results of students' work in history in Sweden. The study shows how history education from the 1960s onwards could be critical and oriented…

Although there is a considerable body of research regarding the relationships between the sociopolitical and economic transition and its implications for the education system in South Korea, there is little known about how sociopolitical and economic factors affect labor education practice in South Korea. The premise of the study is that the…

In mathematics education, utilizing international comparisons to support implementation of educational reforms has become increasingly common. With the advent of "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study" (TIMSS), educational reform seems to have transitioned to a reactionary process rather than a calculated adaptation of…

The last three decades has witnessed a burgeoning comparative education as a field of study in Asia. In China comparative education has taken a phenomenal course from a small and relatively low-key field in search of an identity in the late 1970s to a vibrant one today with a sizable group of scholars across the country, seeking to integrate…

This paper first provides a critic of the implementation of compulsory national assessment protocols internationally, and then nationally through a review of the implementation process used for the introduction of National Standards in New Zealand, and National Testing in Norwegian mainstream schools. It then reviews the impact of these two…

Western and East Asian people hold fundamentally different beliefs about learning that influence how they approach child rearing and education. Reviewing decades of research, Dr. Jin Li presents an important conceptual distinction between the Western mind model and the East Asian virtue model of learning. The former aims to cultivate the mind to…

It is the aim of this article to contribute towards an understanding of why Scandinavia and England have achieved very different levels of social integration in their state school systems.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the representation of other cultures in award-winning picture books from the United States, Australia, and Great Britain between 1960 and 2009. Not only was the cultural content of children's literature over the past fifty years investigated, but the protocol created to evaluate the books was a newly…

Recent developments derived from the increasing economic, cultural and communication interpenetration normally referred to as "globalisation" have shifted the attention of the social sciences to objects of study that have often been overlooked by historiographical traditions centred on the national states. A look at major theoretical currents of…

The domain of national education systems has been identified as one of the richest areas for exploring questions about globalization, particularly the degree of worldwide convergence in educational institutions. This article addresses questions about the transnational production and institutionalization of educational models through a historical…

In the early 1900s, the Qing dynasty implemented a series of institutional reforms to shore up its power. The most important were a nationwide school system and the abolition of the centuries-old civil examinations. "A School in Every Village" recounts how villagers and local state officials in Haicheng County enacted orders to establish…