As the German vocational education and training (VET) system, with its dual learning environment in both firms and vocational schools, is an international benchmark, many concepts and projects are aiming to transfer this approach to other countries and education systems. In such contexts, it is important to consider the specific concepts and…

What is it about afterschool that gives it so much potential to powerfully influence educational best practices around the world? This paper will explore what truly defines "afterschool" beyond the time- and location-based pedagogy of the term and will make the case for the use of "expanded learning" or "expanded…

A recursive partitioning model approach in the form of classification and regression trees (CART) was used with 2012 PISA data for five countries (Canada, Finland, Germany, Singapore-China, and the Unites States). The objective of the study was to determine demographic and educational variables that differentiated between low SES student that were…

Virtual intercultural communication is of great interest in intercultural research. How can a researcher gain access to this field of investigation if s/he does not or only partially speaks the languages used by the subjects? This study is an example of how categories relevant to research can be accessed through in-depth interviews. The interview…

Purpose: Epistemological beliefs, defined as individuals' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing, are assumed to serve an important function in regulating the application of individuals' learning behaviour. Previous research has mainly been shaped by the framework of results of white, well-educated people from North…

This study compares the attitudes of preschool teachers and students between the Netherlands and Germany towards typical play activities in preschool. The data were responses to short video clips of preschool children's play and elicited the respondents' attitudes through questionnaires. The data were analysed by classifying the written responses…

TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) is an international assessment of mathematics and science at the fourth and eighth grades that has been conducted every four years since 1995, with the most recent assessment in 2011. PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is an international assessment of reading…

From an epistemological perspective, Wilhelm von Humboldt's studies on the Oriental and East Asian languages and writing systems (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit, Chinese, Polynesian) raise the question of his position in the Orientalist discourse of his time. Said [Said, E.W., 1978. "Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient, fourth…

In an attempt to understand differences and commonalities in international feminism, a typology is presented and discussed. The study deals with feminist theory in the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States. The typology is based on the concept of difference. Two groups are used in the classification…