With international exams (PISA and TIMSS) producing results every three or four years, there is near continual talk of East Asian dominance in mathematics education. Beyond the reporting of scores, some studies have compared mathematics teaching in these countries with U.S. instruction. However, researchers are not (usually) grade school math…

Several changes have occurred over the past century in the education system of Saudi Arabia. The changes have largely been associated with the fact that in the 21st century, information and communication technology is highly applied in the learning process, thereby leading to a major transformation of the process. The application of information…

This paper analyzed elementary teacher education (hereafter 'TED') programs in the top performing European (TIMSS) countries to help inform future elementary TED policy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Methodological emphasis revolved around how much emphasis should be placed on general content knowledge (GCK), as opposed to general pedagogical…

This paper presents a review of language teacher selection examination and recruitment in Turkey and Poland, together with the national assessments conducted to assess candidates entering the teaching profession such as Praxis I and II and the Teaching Knowledge Test. It further discusses KPSS (Selection Examination for Professional Posts in…

This paper reviews Ghana's performance in the TIMSS 2011 survey in comparison with other African and some high performing countries which participated in the TIMSS assessment. Students' achievement in the science content areas assessed were summarized and teacher preparation constructs of teachers of the students who took part in the assessment…

This article investigates the continuing professional development (CPD) culture of teachers, and asks how it is influenced by properties of the school system. It reports the results of a questionnaire study with 418 secondary teachers from Sweden and Germany. The results show highly significant differences between Swedish and German teachers'…

Benchmarking within higher education is now relatively commonplace, as institutions increasingly compete directly with one another to improve the overall "quality" of what they do and attempt to establish and better their position among peers as measured against sector standards. The benchmarking of confidence among academic staff in…

Research shows that professional learning can have a powerful effect on teacher skills and knowledge, and on how well students learn. To be effective, however, professional learning for teachers needs to be conducted in the ways that it is in many high achieving countries--continuously, collaboratively, and with a focus on teaching specific…