Colleges are important providers of vocational education and training and in some countries they are the major provider. Although the international literature on colleges has grown considerably in the past two decades, it still consists primarily of qualitative descriptions of college sectors in different countries. Quantitative studies of…

A significant distinguishing characteristic of the International Classroom Lexicon Project was the documentation of classroom pedagogical practices of mathematics teachers in the original languages of ten communities. These lexicons provide us with an opportunity to compare identified teacher practices within these communities. In this paper, we…

Families are active agents in school systems and apply different strategies of educational advantage to help their children succeed at school. These strategies are planned and enacted by families with their children in mind, but they are always a response to the broader education system design. This article explores how through their strategies…

In qualitative methods, there are various approaches that can be used to answer particular social questions, for example ethnography and case study. Two studies conducted by different researchers in China and Australia using these approaches were described and analysed in order to find out their similarities and differences in terms of…

This paper compares the findings of two studies on the publication patterns in leading Australian, English and German education journals. The first study was funded by the German Research Association and the second one was unfunded, and they were conducted by a team of international researchers. The first study compared three English and three…

This article explores the issue of social mobility in relation to the recent expansion of higher vocational education (HIVE) by non-university providers. The post-school vocational education sector has become the object of policies to widen access to higher education to ensure greater social mobility and provide second chance education to those…

From a social semiotic perspective, image designs in science textbooks are inevitably influenced by the sociocultural context in which the books are produced. The learning environments of Australia and Taiwan vary greatly. Drawing on social semiotics and cognitive science, this study compares classificational images in Australian and Taiwanese…

The recent growth in privately administered secondary education in many developed countries has been a widely observed phenomenon. The Australian private secondary school sector has grown faster than those in any other "OECD" nation, even though the average tuition fees charged by these schools have increased at double the nation's…

This paper reports on an investigation into the representation of teachers in newspapers in five countries. An innovative methodology was used to develop a method of inquiry that supports a deeper understanding of media representations of teachers which can also be used by other researchers in comparative education. The paper explores relevant…

This article focuses on analysing the effect of educational differentiation policies of OECD educational systems on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, based on data from PISA 2009. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a definition of two subgroups of disadvantaged students: those that achieve high scores, and those obtaining scores…

University rankings are having a profound effect on both higher education systems and individual universities. In this paper we outline these effects, discuss the desirable characteristics of a good ranking methodology and document existing practice, with an emphasis on the two main international rankings (Shanghai Jiao Tong and THES-QS). We take…

This report has a simple aim: to present results from international assessments so readers can judge for themselves how American students stack up globally. It's intended to be a stand-alone supplement to the "Education Olympics" web event held between August 8th and August 22nd, 2008 (see edolympics.net). It shows how the U.S. has…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced increasing pressures to provide accountability data and consumer information on the quality of teaching and learning. Existing ratings and rankings of HEIs tend to neglect information on student learning outcomes. Instead, they focus on inputs, activities and research outputs, such as resources…

This volume is one of a series intended to provide a comparative view of the education systems of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Member countries. It complements an OECD handbook entitled Methods and Statistical Needs for Educational Planning (see ED 023 171). The document is based on the need to establish a…

The framework of a study of organizational effectiveness in Australian higher education institutions was applied to a similar study in the United Kingdom. The approach was found useful for classifying U.K. institutions as classical universities, former polytechnics and colleges of advanced technology, and greenfield universities. (Author/MSE)