Provides an overview of this special issue on educational systems design. The International Systems Institute (ISI), a nonprofit agency that contributed the issue, is described; and summaries of the papers are presented, organized according to major themes covered (i.e., conceptual models and issues, design applications, and design learning). (LRW)

Conceptual ambiguity surrounds notions of gifted and talented; justification for talent development is often linked with rejection of the term gifted. Talent development should mean identification of those who show superior natural abilities as well as aptitudes for a particular domain and emphasis on developing those special skills. (SK)

Although it does not conform to school expectations of parental involvement, an immigrant family's attempts to instill values by exposing children to physical labor teach them about work and its hardships and makes them aware of the value of education. (Contains 61 references.) (SK)

This article reports how Philadelphia's new, standardized curriculum is just one component of a larger agenda for secondary education. By 2008, the school system plans to make a transition from about 55 high schools, when Chief Executive Officer Paul G. Vallas took the helm in 2002, to between 70 and 80 smaller ones of choice. As part of the…

This paper examines the implementation of British Council English language teaching projects at Chinese universities. The study argues that the key to successful cross-cultural communication is an informed appreciation of the perception gap that separates donor and recipient. Cultural sensitivity and the use of a culturally appropriate methodology…

This article deals with the issues of access and expansion in France. It elaborates on the rationale and causes behind the expansion of higher education over the last 25 years and the impact this has had on the system, more particularly in terms of inclusion and exclusion. The article shows that, as in the United Kingdom, although expansion has…

A great deal of emphasis has been placed on what was originally called school development planning and what is now more commonly known as school improvement planning. While attention is now moving to the strategic dimension the danger is to associate strategy with the mechanistic structures of the strategic planning approach. The key to successful…

Post-colonial theories about liminality, hybridity, unhomeliness, and identity form a novel lens through which to re-theorise educational development work. Applying these conceptual frameworks allows practitioners and the academics they work with the opportunity to problematise some of educational development's colonial underpinnings and…

These proceedings contain the papers of the International Conference e-Learning 2016, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society, 1-3 July, 2016. This conference is part of the Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems 2016, 1-4 July. The e-Learning (EL) 2016 conference aims…

An old saying about learning that has been passed down from generation to generation in Vietnam states, "The success of learning is determined by intelligence but the passing of an examination is determined by luck." Whether this idea is simply to comfort those who fail or not, it sheds light on the Vietnamese psyche on learning as well…

Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which Latin American countries consistently perform at the…

This book grew out of the experience of a European Union Thematic Network of the same title, and focuses on aspects of the complex and varying relationships between globalisation, Europeanisation and Education. The volume is divided into two parts: Part One: Governance and the Knowledge Economy, focuses on how the discourses of a Knowledge Economy…

This article examines China's senior high "Thought and Politics" ("sixiang zhengzhi") texts, analyzing how these seek to legitimize the regime's developmental strategy. It is argued that their overriding emphasis on the strengthening of the state is premised upon the imperative of securing China's position within global order…

This paper reports on a research project investigating the role of universities in South Africa in contributing to poverty reduction through the quality of their professional education programmes. The focus here is on theorising and the early operationalisation of multi-layered, multi-dimensional transformation based on ideas from Amartya Sen's…

In the drive to achieve universal primary education as one of the Millennium Development Goals, there is an increasing recognition of the urgency of focusing on teacher education to both meet the demand for more than one million qualified teachers required to achieve this goal within sub-Saharan Africa, as well as to combat the sometimes poor…