Quality educational institutions are strategic tools for accelerating the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). All the 17 SDGs are interlinked. For instance, quality education (SDG4) reduces poverty (SDG 1,2) and inequalities (SDG10) and stimulates good health and wellbeing (SDG3). The paper applied unorthodox theoretical…

Although often seen as places of culture, cultivation and creativity, language courses borrow the language of creativity for test-centered practices. Research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology has long recognized language courses as sites for the legitimation of neoliberal ideals that emphasize language as global, individual, and…

Education policy is a key devolved policy arena in which there are considerable tensions between and within institutions, within and across Scotland and the UK, and in relations with Europe. It may be assumed such tensions could increase during the process of Brexit and the implementation of the 2016 Scotland Act (Arnott 2016; Arnott and Ozga…

The United States has posted more than 100 consecutive months of net job gains since the economic recovery began in 2010, making this the longest expansion in seven decades. Yet, for many, wage growth has lagged, leaving many families economically insecure. Meanwhile, job and economic growth continue to accrue in select corners of the nation,…

Creativity and innovation are important inputs in the global knowledge economy. However, while the theoretical concepts and the measurement of creativity on the individual level have made considerable progress during the last decades, so-called sectoral approaches to measuring creativity and innovation on the level of aggregate units are less well…

This paper explores one example of an international comparison -- the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) -- in order to investigate the power of numbers in both the shaping and the legitimisation of adult literacy policy using Scotland as a case study. It is argued that policy…

Commoditization seems immutable and unstoppable but, like other social processes, its prevalence is context dependent. The enabling context for commoditization has been cheap fossil fuels, economic growth, and ever-increasing energy and material throughput. In fact, the scientific findings of ecological, climate, footprint, and material flow…

Japan, the Republic of Korea and Singapore are in the process of adopting approaches that can be characterised by the terms "learning society" and "lifelong learning". This report uses case studies to present a description of the three countries' national socio-economic climates and to assess their political will and…

Despite the tremendous economic progress made by the Chinese economy, averaging a nine percent growth per year, one section of the community remains outside the economic boom. As state-owned enterprises (SOEs) restructure into more efficient organisations able to compete in the global economy, the plight of workers within these enterprises has…

The present study explores how scholars working in the field of applied linguistics, language policy and language education might best contest and negotiate the increasingly economics-driven language polices enacted at the institutional levels of schools and workplaces. The study focuses on Japan as an interesting case of incongruence between…

Globalisation, transnational policies and adult education--This paper examines policy documents produced by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the European Union (EU) in the field of adult education and learning. Both these entities address adult education as an explicit object of policy. This paper…

In Asia, we are witnessing an era where the pendulum of power is swaying towards the East with the rising economic strength of China and India. Singapore is at the "crossroads" between the East and West of these most populous nations on earth. Although Singapore may appear the most Westernised country in Asia, she is nevertheless a…

The globalization of business education is leading to convergence in the traditionally more diverse business curriculum. This can be seen by examining the mission and vision statements of Asia and Australasia's leading business schools, which emphasize the provision of quality learning and scholarship; educating future leaders; and contributing to…

This paper has two main objectives. First, it aims to analyse the connections between education and poverty established by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), a central policy tool for the articulation of the Post Washington Consensus. Second, it intends to study how the PRSPs have been consolidated and expanded through different…

The logic behind international aid to development has typically centered on economics. Notwithstanding the variation in focus--from macroeconomic monetary and trade policies, to economic wealth programs aimed at creating jobs, to supply- and demand-side reforms--the central discourse on international aid has been dominated by a political…