Despite ongoing reform efforts, academic achievement in the U.S. educational system is declining both on internal measures as well as on international comparative assessments. While students from affluent backgrounds continue to do well academically, there is a growing achievement gap as underprivileged urban students fall further behind. This…

This book presents a global overview of discourses of globalization, current research in education and education policy reforms. It first examines globalisation, education and policy research and reforms in education, including coverage of main trends in education and policy reforms globally, as well as specific policy issues such as equity,…

Teacher shortages have intensified across several OECD countries, making this an urgent priority for education systems. Between 2015 and 2022, the share of students whose principals reported shortages rose from 29% to 46.7% on average across the OECD. Simultaneously, rapid technological advances, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and broader…

This article explores the Japanese history of women's adult social education after the Second World War and presents a case study of the women's classes held in Chofu City. Under the Allied Occupation following the war, the democratisation of Japan was urgent, and developing women's adult education was indispensable. The newly established Women's…

How has schooling functioned in the construction of meritocratic national systems historically? To what extent will these historical patterns and normative commitments continue in the new era of a global meritocracy? And ultimately, how can educators effectively balance the inherent tension between individual merit and standardized quality? Kariya…

As the research work of academic associations faces restrictions and reductions due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Japan Educational Research Association launched a jointly held participatory webinar series, "Pandemic and Education: What Should Be Done to Support Learning?" (4 sessions), through the JERA secretariat, Research…

As documented in this special issue, all over the world hard choices must be made in education, government, business, and medicine. Intelligence tests, used intelligently and with appropriate ethical safeguards, are one tool of many that help make hard choices work out well, or at least better than the next-best alternative (Kaufman, Raiford,…

Globalization has become one of the most recurrent concepts in social and political sciences. More often than not, however, the concept is handled without much of a properly articulated theory capable of explaining its historical origin and expansion. For education researchers attempting to elucidate how global changes and processes affect their…

In 2020, 1.5 billion students in 188 countries/economies were locked out of their schools. Students everywhere have been faced with schools that are open one day and closed the next, causing massive disruption to their learning. With the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic still raging, many education systems are still struggling, and the situation is…

The central focus of this book is the concept of higher education reform in the light of an international and global comparative perspective. After decades of far-reaching reform, higher education around the world has profoundly changed and now has to face the challenges of the present. This volume takes a close look at these changes, the drivers…

This paper deals with an overall changing trend witnessed in public schooling in Japan, known as educational reforms. Through looking at recent reforms in Japan, with an international trend in view, the author first summarizes educational reforms as waves of liberalization that have changed the post-war fundamental principle of Japanese education.…

This book advances discussion and disseminates knowledge and global perspectives on what school leadership looks like, how it is enacted and under what circumstances, and when or where lessons might be portable. This book has wide appeal for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners considering school leadership and how to support it…

This article synthesises findings from two systematic reviews that examined evidence of the link between large-scale assessments (LSAs) and education policy in economically developing countries and in countries of the Asia-Pacific. Analyses summarise evidence of assessment characteristics and policy goals of LSAs that influence education policy,…

This article examines Japanese education system especially relevant to the school curriculum, which might support Japanese high performance in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), mainly through Japanese policy documents. The Japanese education systems have been constructed by the local context of society and politics,…

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…