Globalisation and policy transfer in education make it incumbent upon decision makers to prioritise among competing policy options, select policy initiatives that are appropriate for their national contexts, and understand how system-specific factors moderate the relationship between those policies and student outcomes. This study used qualitative…

The current study aims to examine the effects of implicit learning on Japanese EFL junior college students' writing. The concept of written corrective feedback (WCF) has continued to receive much attention in second language acquisition research. Although most researchers have been supportive of explicit WCF for the development of accuracy, others…

The new national educational policy was implemented at secondary schools in 2002 in Japan. The revised Course of Study for foreign language education corresponding to the national educational policy decreased the number of English lessons per week from four to three at the junior high school level, which resulted in a 25% decrease in English…

If there is one thing that describes the trajectory of American education, it is this: more high-stakes testing. In the United States, the debates surrounding this trajectory can be so fierce that it feels like we are in uncharted waters. As Christopher Bjork reminds us in this study, however, we are not the first to make testing so central to…

This article explores the neo-institutional theory of global policy convergence, or "isomorphism", by comparatively examining one of its most recent manifestations--the global diffusion of national standardised testing--in Australia and Japan. By understanding the particular configurations of national testing as being conditioned by both…

In this study, the researchers examined how 64 university students engaged in self-directed group learning and used a self-developed e-portfolio system. A sixweek event was held where the students made entries to the e-portfolio individually each week, received feedback from advisors, studied in groups on a voluntary basis, and reflected on their…

"Pseudowords", or non-real words, were introduced to the Yes/No (YN) vocabulary test format to provide a means of checking for overestimation of word knowledge by test takers. The purpose of this study is to assess the assumption that more pseudoword checks (false alarms) indicate more instances of overestimation of word knowledge in YN…

Sponsored by the by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a set of tests administered every three years to 15-year-olds around the world. These tests measure students' practical ability in basic skills such as reading, mathematics, and science, but reporting…

Using the political-economic analysis of globalisation and education as well as a culturalist approach to education policy borrowing, the paper analyses the role of local actors, specifically, national newspapers and the Ministry of Education, in mediating the potentially homogenising curricular policy pressure of globalisation exerted through the…

The New Japanese version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was administered twice to 200 Japanese female college students to verify the equivalence of the computer- and booklet-administered formats. For four scales, scores from the computer version were statistically significantly higher than those from the booklet…

Japan's Central Council on Education was established in 1987 and charged with recommending changes in the national curriculum. Expected changes within the next five years include reducing the school week to five days, introducing a program for gifted and talented students, providing more full-time counselors, improving and integrating…

Reports on recent changes in examination policy and practice in China, England and Wales, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Identifies and discusses some significant trade-offs arising from the implementation of examination policy. Discusses four nearly universal dilemmas of…

Technical high school students in Japan were given a test of consumer mathematics and items from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Expectations of students' scores were predicted by their teachers and by corporate employers. Scores were quite high and were higher than comparative NAEP data. (GDC)

Investigates the performance of students from different language backgrounds, using data from a computer-adaptive Japanese grammar test developed as a placement tool. Findings indicate item difficulties to be quite different for each group of candidates and imply that when candidates are from a different background from that of the trial…

The major goal of this study is to apply the essential unidimensionality statistic of W. Stout and the corresponding computer program (DIMTEST) to a hierarchical level mathematics achievement data set and to determine the extent to which the undimensional assumption can be accurately applied to mathematics achievement data. The study also…