This study surveys the history of English language and the roles of English language education in Asian context. Through the historical survey on English dispersal in Asian countries, the first section of this study traces the dispersal of English from the 18th century and the development of English in Asian countries. The second section of this…

Distance education is a very popular and intriguing area in the present realm of education. Institutions of higher learning throughout the United States and around the world are quickly embracing distance education to serve thousands of students. This literature review of the foundations of technology distance education culminates in the year…

This article outlines the current problems facing vocational education in China in order to raise the question as to how deep-seated and intractable they might be. In order to address this question a historical analysis of vocational education from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of Mao's period of office is undertaken. The rise of…

This essay argues for the development of a research agenda on the comparative history of Catholic education internationally from the nineteenth century to the present. This requires, in the first instance, the production of a series of individual-country case studies, concentrating on relations between the Catholic Church and the particular state…

The thesis of this article is that the uncritical adoption of Western models of education management and leadership policies results in poor performance in schools in disadvantaged communities in developing countries. The argument shows that this has led to the institutionalization of generic education policies that are not contingent to the…

One important hallmark of William Lowe Boyd's scholarship was his uncanny ability to identify and articulate changes in the key ideas that shape and reshape scholarly, professional, and public discussions of educational policy and politics. Whether one thinks about debates over centralization and decentralization of policy control, changes in…

Beginning with an analysis of the manifesto commitments of the two Coalition partners the author proceeds to set their subsequent policies as they are understood by June 2011 in the context of successive new "frameworks" for UK higher education since the Robbins Report of 1963. This analysis is developed in relation to: the relative…

The empowerment literature has tended to focus on reinforcing the capacity of local populations to act effectively in promoting change on their own behalf. Borrowing from the social capital literature, achieving greater empowerment might be linked also to the actions and aims of the already powerful. A group might endeavor to exert its ability to…

This article examines how interest groups in Hong Kong have politicised national history, an unpopular school subject, for their own political ends and allied themselves with the PRC against the SAR government and its policy of not making it a single, independent, compulsory core subject in the school curriculum. The article argues that this has…

School segregation continues to be understood as legitimate in Germany. To explain why, we chart the development of the learning disability discourse and the special education profession, providing insights into the ongoing expansion of segregated special schooling. The discourse analysis of articles published between 1908 and 2004 in the special…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) SLO-Based Grading Makes Assessment an Integral Part of Teaching (Nagy N. Bengiamin and Christina Leimer); (2) Editor's Notes: Assessing Assessment's ROI (Trudy W. Banta); (3) Assessment Plans: A Tool for Sanity (Shannon M. Sexton); and (4) Lessons from…

Education is often seen as the key agency in international development and poverty reduction. Frequently the emphasis is on the economic and social role of education in development. This book, on the other hand, is unusual in explicitly examining the political role of education in development. In particular, it sets out the theories, evidence and…

The sectoral divide between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education in Australia is blurring as a consequence of broader social and economic pressures for a more highly skilled population, but also as a consequence of government policies designed to develop tertiary education markets and to diversify institutional types. The…

This year is designated as Thailand's "English Speaking Year" with the aim of improving the communicative competence of Thais for the upcoming integration of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2015. The consistent low-level proficiency of the Thais in the English language has led to numerous curriculum revisions and…

This article examines the uptake of "suzhi"--roughly glossed as "quality"--in China's recent curriculum reform called "suzhi jiaoyu" (Education for Quality) in the rural ethnic context of Qiandongnan. It engages with three layers of analysis. First is a brief etymological overview of "suzhi" to map out its…