This position paper proposes a revisiting of the academic calendar for Ghanaian basic schools, emphasising the need to extend the first-trimester vacation period to better align with sociocultural, economic, and environmental realities. The current first vacation, which runs from late December to early January, overlaps with festive events,…

Students based in higher education institutions in rural settings are faced with various challenges. This literature study offers insights into the implication of "rurality" in terms of Higher Education in a rural context, considering student well-being and social work training challenges. It stresses that the University of Zululand has…

This chapter takes up the Chinese "floating children" (or internal migrant children) as both a method and a site to problematize how social science research represents difference, mobility, and change based upon unity, fixity, and stability. I begin with providing a general account of diverse theories and narratives in use by Chinese…

Given the big gap between rural areas and cities and developed areas of China in basic education, it is of great significance to train a large number of excellent teachers for basic education in the vast rural areas so as to boost basic education there and achieve educational equity. Hanshan Normal University is a regional normal university…

The widespread school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the learning crisis for children living in Eastern and Southern Africa. The crisis has also shown the great need to develop resilient education systems that can provide learning when schools are forced to close. Understanding how to provide remote learning equitably…

This article collected information that describes Costa Rican educational scenario during the closing of schools due to COVID-19 pandemic. It is described the strategies the Ministry of Public Education embraced to have students engaged in the learning process, and how teachers and parents were coping to provide a meaningful and quality education…

This work presents a new teaching module for understanding the geographical dimensions of historical events in Africa. This case study focuses in particular on the Joola shipwreck in Senegal in order to illustrate geographic areas of study including the rural-urban divide, colonial geopolitics, cultural diversity, and West Africa's physical…

This paper is a reflective account of a travel that shifted the site of initial elementary teacher education from a metropolitan milieu of New Delhi; to the contrasting locale of a remote mountain region in the central Himalayas. This shift of site aimed to re-locate the concerns of quality schooling, diversity and ecological living to this new…

Timor-Leste is a small state that finally achieved independence in 2002. It has had to re-build an entire education system from a small base largely destroyed in the independence struggle. This paper presents the issues identified in pre-independence meetings, and considers these within the framework of transition and transformation problems for a…

This article is a response to Kassam, Avery, and Ruelle's insights as presented in this forum on rural science education. Topics considered include troubling the urban/rural divide in the context of Indigenous knowledge and expanding to include the common Canadian notion of the "remote," a designation rooted in our national colonial…

Research has repeatedly proven that parental participation in the education of their children plays a major role in their academic performance and general development. Children whose parents and families in general stay engaged in their education have been shown to perform better than those who do not receive such family support. In Kenya, the…

Pre-service teachers need to be prepared to teach in both rural and urban contexts. Preparation to teach multi-grade classes in rural schools is excellent preparation for teaching any class, including urban single-grade classes. Based on our previous research and experience, we designed a unit to prepare our pre-service teachers for the issues…

The rise in low-fee private (LFP) primary schooling serving relatively poor clients is becoming well-documented. However much of this literature focuses on urban areas whose dense populations are favourable to market growth and competition. This paper goes some way to filling a gap in the literature on whether LFP schools are serving the needs of…

This paper seeks to explore creative practice in an Australian country town, and in so doing, to unsettle market-orientated interpretations of creativity that privilege the urban. Instead of focusing on creative practice as a means to develop industries, we focus on how creativity is a means to establish a cooperative gallery space that helps to…

This article concludes the two issues on the College Entrance Examination (CEE) in which the contributing authors were invited to take part in a moderated discussion of their opinions on a newly unveiled national policy document titled "Blueprint for Medium and Long-Term National Education Reform and Development (2010-0)" (hereafter, the…