Guided by critical discourse analysis, this study analyzes how ancient civilizations are constructed in high school history textbooks used in Quebec, Canada. The findings suggest that the narrative generally ignores 2-way intercultural exchanges. The narrative is also Eurocentric, silencing sub-Saharan Africa's contributions and nonmaterial…

The purpose of this paper is to study Naqvi's novel, "Home Boy" (2010) as a Neo Orientalist discourse of US officials about Pakistani Muslims. This paper will discuss how US officials including that of G. W. Bush perceive the Oriental world -- by using the same strategy -- as one distinguished by strangeness, creepiness, and unusual…

A new kind of gender equality ideology is rising in popularity in Western societies. While emphasising gender equality for the next generation, this new ideology sees feminism in a pragmatic and simplistic way, as nonthreatening to the status quo, in politics, popular culture, and economy. In the economic sphere, Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean…

Many students enter classes with a very Orientalist mental map of the region usually called the "Middle East." This is understandable considering the information and images of the region that pervade our media landscape. In an effort to teach student how to critically examine media sources themselves, the author utilizes a blog format…

This article examines the increasing postcolonial and decolonising literature as it relates to non-Western countries and the history of their educational systems undergoing internationalisation and globalisation. The first section reviews a number of historiographical developments in the twentieth century that laid a foundation for a more cultural…

Western pedagogy and its preconceived notions of the non-Western world can limit scholars from developing accurate understandings of culturally different societies. Western academics teaching at foreign and Western institutions abroad must be mindful of how ingrained and subconscious Orientalist thinking can distort and hinder their interactions…

This commentary was written while the author was visiting the 30th International Congress of Psychology in Cape Town, South Africa. Looking at the program, he could see that psychological research on non-Western populations and internationally comparative research seems to be much "en vogue"! However, much of the research he has seen…

The context of this paper is a strategy at a large Australian university that involves embedding a new graduate quality 'cultural competence' and lifting the profile of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, experiences and histories. It has been argued that the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges is essential for the decolonisation of our…

This article seeks to elaborate the step of epistemological affirmation that exists within every movement of learning. My epistemological method is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics in contrast to empirical or rationalist traditions. I argue that any movement of learning is based upon an entry into a hermeneutical circle: one is thrown into, or…

Great Books programs and Western civilization courses have understandably emphasized the Greco-Roman and Hebraic origins of Western civilization, while moving on to a European focus, with some material relating to the Western Hemisphere usually brought in for good measure. After all, people have the ancient Greeks to thank for such landmark…

This article provides an analysis of two colonial reports, the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports on education in the British colony of Malaya. The popular stance on the Barnes and the Fenn-Wu Reports is that one is an effect or reply to the other. We argue on the contrary that the two reports construct a common argument on nation-building which…

This qualitative research examines the influence of learning Javanese gamelan on aspects of musicianship, attitudes and approaches relating to the learning and performance of Western instruments experienced by a sample of UK university music students. In addition to benefits to musicianship, students delineated positive developments in attitudes…

The present study examined an international sample of adults from the Survey of Adult Skills administered by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2009) to assess (1) how specific individual and country-level characteristics predict adult readiness to…

Will my children's creativity be hindered if I place them within the rigidity of an East Asian school? Conversely, could my children's math and science skills benefit from the high expectations of an East Asian curriculum and teacher? The purpose of this study is two-fold. Firstly, it aims to demonstrate that comparison between Eastern and Western…

"Ubuntu" is an African philosophy of human kindness; applying it in the Global South would fundamentally alter the design of the education sector. This essay argues, however, that the field of international educational development is not, in fact, structured to support an education influenced by "ubuntu" ideals. Specifically,…