Education has been powerfully affected by the rise of a neoliberal political, economic and cultural agenda. The Australian experience since the 1980s is outlined. Educators need to understand neoliberalism, and also to think about the nature of education itself, as a social process of nurturing capacities for practice. Education itself cannot be…

In an era of increasing global agricultural trade, many firms and farms seek to upgrade their agricultural commodity chains to become better integrated into global markets. Utilizing a global commodity chain (GCC) approach, this analysis unravels the challenges to and the potential consequences of upgrading Botswana's beef commodity chain.…

This article addresses one of the many sensitive and challenging problems generated by China's era of reform and economic growth: the need to retrain or educate laid-off (displaced) workers from state owned enterprises (SOEs). It does so to provide valuable insight for those responsible for the changes associated with the move to the current…

This essay maps some of the ways in which the professional knowledge of English teaching has been defined and positioned in the present moment in the United States. The first part of the essay traces multidisciplinary shifts in English education/literacy research that have expanded and shifted the discursive boundaries of teacher education and…

We find that over the period 1950-1990, US states absorbed increases in the supply of schooling due to tighter compulsory schooling and child labor laws mostly through within-industry increases in the schooling intensity of production. Shifts in the industry composition towards more schooling-intensive industries played a less important role. To…

Last October Lord Browne of Madingley published the long-awaited report of his "Independent Review into Higher Education Funding and Student Finance" (Independent Review 2010). Browne and his colleagues recommended the removal of the "cap" on the tuition fees chargeable for first degrees by taxpayer-funded universities in…

To social workers, extreme economic inequality is primarily a violation of social justice, but this article shows how growing economic inequality since the mid-1970s was not only unjust, but also dysfunctional to the U.S. economy and linked to the recent economic crisis with its devastating effects, particularly on the social work clientele. The…

In July 2010 in Beijing, Lei Wang interviewed Professor Dayuan Jiang, Research Fellow at the Ministry of Education's Central Institute for Vocational and Technical Education about how China has drawn from foreign vocational education models and China's own innovation process. Jiang pointed out that Germany's educational philosophy and talent…

The purpose of this research project was to explore what the core factors are that play a role in the development of the smart-grid. This research study examined The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 as it pertains to the smart-grid, the economic and security effects of the smart grid, and key factors for its success. The…

This paper addresses the complex relationship between Confucian values and music education in East Asia, particularly its history in China. How does one account for the present "cultural fever" of Western classical music that has infected more than 100 million Chinese practitioners? It is proposed that Western classical music finds…

Purpose: The Polish economy is continuing its expansion through the adoption of free market economics in the post-communist era. To encourage this growth in a future where difficult global economic conditions are likely to persist, it is essential that entrepreneurial activity is encouraged within the next generation of graduates. This study aims…

"What is ?Curriculum Theory" articulates the problematic of difference, diversity, and multiplicity in contemporary curriculum thought. More specifically, this essay argues that the conceptualization of difference that dominates the contemporary curriculum landscape is inadequate to either the task of ontological experimentation or the creation of…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the ability of freshman college students to identify the founding fathers of free enterprise and of communism has improved. This study is a follow-up to four previous studies. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to College of Business and College of Education & Human Services…

Background: The labour market for classroom teachers in England is a mixture of free-market capitalism and state workforce planning, interlaced with ideological and political interventions such as the introduction of new routes into teaching and the capping of class size. Purpose: The article examines the relationship between the teacher labour…

Over the last few decades, the idea that education should function to promote economic progress has played a major role in shaping educational policy. So far, however, philosophers of education have shown relatively little interest in analysing this notion and its implications. The present article critically examines, from a philosophical…