Sebastian Thrun gave up tenure at Stanford University after 160,000 students signed up for his free online version of the course "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence." The experience completely changed his perspective on education, he said, so he ditched teaching at Stanford and launched the private Web site Udacity, which offers…

The democratization of education in Malaysia has come a long way since the early 1960s. In the early 1990s, the government decided to democratize secondary education in order to widen formal access to secondary education, especially at the upper secondary level. It is the contention of this paper that the widening of formal access to education may…

The relationship between education and state formation in the United States differed from that in other countries in ways that have yet to be adequately accounted for in comparative and theoretical literatures. Specifically, in the northern United States, very high levels of mass school attendance and funding were achieved prior to and outside…

Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), which have come to play an increasingly important role in multiple aspects of daily lives. There is an unprecedented expansion of the information available online and existing in an ever more interconnected world; however, this change has been so…

This article explores the politics of literacy in late colonial Sudan. Drawing upon hitherto untapped archival sources in English and Arabic, it focuses on two key questions: What were the purposes and uses of literacy in the eyes of colonial authorities? What means were used to spread literacy skills among Sudanese people? Positioning these…

The nature of nanoscience and nanotechnology (collectively, nano) are discussed as important examples of the modern sciences and technologies that are having an increasing impact on all aspects of life. In this Position paper, general proposals are made for the levels of understanding of nano that might be attained by whole populations. The ideas…

Surely "massive open online course" (MOOC) has one of the ugliest acronyms of recent years, lacking the deliberate playfulness of Yahoo (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) or the droll shoulder shrug suggested by the word "snafu" (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up). The author is not a complete neophyte to online…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the role of a small-scale project around storytelling as a form of informal education in five health clinics in rural areas of the Limpopo Province in South Africa. The aim of the project is to decrease the stigma around HIV/AIDS and to start an open dialogue in local communities about the disease.…

Is the world "flat" or is the world "spiky"? Although leading authors and thinkers [Florida, 2005] struggle to find the perfect metaphor for describing our 21st century global ecosystem, there is agreement that the landscape is shifting. There is overwhelming agreement that our current education system was designed and…

This paper argues for new departures in English as an International Language (EIL) pedagogy for the social majorities "in their own interest," not that of the privileged stratum of metropolitan elites. It is incontestable that the unstoppable spread of global English is a product of cultural, socioeconomic and political hegemony that is ultimately…

Over the second half of the twentieth century, changes occurred in parent reports of their engagement in cognitive activities with their young children in the United States. This article argues that the growing trend of "parenting for cognitive development" in young children in the latter half of the twentieth century is associated with the…

In contemporary contexts of Education for All and emphases on national educational performance, mass education globally continues to be strongly informed by human capital thinking, and by notions of developing future world citizens and workers for the international economy. In this paper, our central focus is on the ongoing educational project of…

Unique cross-national data on adolescents' civic skills, knowledge, and political attitudes are used to examine the democratic processes of modern mass schooling, effects of national political systems, and patterns of youth political socialization in 27 nations. Compared to the generally weak reported effects on mathematics and reading…

Self-directed learning on open online networks is now a possibility as communication and resources can be combined to create learning environments. But is it really? There are some challenges that might prevent learners from having a quality learning experience. This paper raises questions on levels of learner autonomy, presence, and critical…

Students, sometimes at very young ages, and increasing numbers of teachers are taking part in some form of social networking or collective collaboration by using mass communication technology. Club Penguin, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter are just a few examples that span a wide range of ages. This is no surprise, given that the current crop of…