The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines what students know in reading, mathematics and science, and what they can do with what they know. It provides the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student learning outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the quality and equity of learning…

Borrowing a framework used to study adolescent peer groups, this chapter relates key findings from chapters in this volume to the status or reputation that peers accord a given organized activity, the tendency of activities to channel adolescents toward some relationships and away from others, and the context for peer interactions created within…

Since the beginning of the federal Race To The Top grant competition, Value-Added Measurement (VAM) has captured the attention of the American public through high-profile media representations of the tool and the controversy that surrounds it. In this paper, we build upon investigations of constructions of VAM in the media and present a discourse…

With the use of Bruner's concept of story, broad generalizations from the US, and political philosophy, this article suggests that comparisons between music programs throughout the world are meaningless unless we acknowledge how pervasive, insidious, and menacing is the rhetoric of the global market economy. Political philosophy is one process of…

Library and information science is a technologically intensive profession with a high percentage of women, unlike computer science and other male-dominated fields. On the occasion of the 2011 ALISE conference, this essay analyzes the theme "Competitiveness and Innovation" through a review of social psychology and science and technology…

In this study, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to compute efficiency scores for a sample of Italian schools by employing OECD-PISA2006 data aggregated at school level. Efficiency has been defined as the ability to transform inputs (resources, student background, etc.) into outputs (student achievement). Different versions of the DEA models…

Drawing from theory and research into social comparison processes, the present study sought to determine children's motives for comparison in addition to the coexistence of class and individual comparisons in school physical education. The main and interactive effects of these types of comparisons were examined in relation to pupils'…

Studies of the competition effects from voucher or tuition tax credit scholarship programs on public school student academic outcomes have taken place in seven locations throughout the United States, with the majority of studies taking place in Florida, followed by Wisconsin. This article reviews 21 total studies of the impacts on student academic…

Globalization has unleashed profound changes in education. These include positivistic international school comparisons, a singular focus on schools as drivers of economic development, and the adoption of neoliberal market principles in school. These changes, however, generally go unexamined within the field and literature of global education.…

For over a decade policy-makers have claimed that advanced industrial societies should develop a knowledge-based economy (KBE) in response to economic globalisation and the transfer of manufacturing jobs to lower cost countries. In the UK, this vision shaped New Labour's policies for vocational education and training (VET), higher education and…

The tacit knowledge of university faculty might take roots deep down in their own cognition system and influence their ways of thinking and reasoning. This study aims at (1) the exploration of the characteristics of university professors' tacit knowledge in Taiwan and (2) the disentangling of the factors underlying its development. Drawn from the…

In this paper, the authors investigate what global visions of education are reflected in the selected national curriculum standards, with special reference to two seemingly contradictory forces: globalization and nationalism. This paper examines the socio-economic and cultural foundations of the curriculum and explains how the national curriculum…

The majority of research on the link between video games and aggression has focused on the violent content in games. In contrast, recent experimental research suggests that it is video game competition, not violence, that has the greatest effect on aggression in the short-term. However, no researchers have examined the long-term relationship…

The new demands of mass systems of higher education and the emerging environment of global academic competition are altering the traditional institutions for assuring academic standards in universities. As a consequence many nations are experimenting with new instruments for academic quality assurance. Contemporary government control of academic…

No topic in private higher education study has attracted as great attention globally as has growth. This is appropriate as private growth has soared to nearly a third of the world's total higher education enrolment. But while private growth continues to be the dominant trend, important declines in private shares have emerged. These must be…