Understanding the origins of poor literacy and numeracy skills in adulthood and how to improve them is of major importance when society places a high premium on proficiency in these basic skills. This edited collection brings together the results of recent longitudinal studies that greatly extend our knowledge of what works in raising skill…

Through special funding by the Ministry of Education and Science in 2008, the Research Institute for Higher Education (RIHE) at Hiroshima University has been able to implement a new research project on the reform of higher education in the knowledge-based society of the 21st century. RIHE hosted the third International Workshop on the Higher…

Although priding itself on high rates of literacy achievement, New Zealand's track record in the last two decades has noticeably declined. Successive New Zealand governments have invested heavily in trying to redress this decline with limited success. Demographic changes in population due to immigration provide a partial explanation, but arguably,…

One cannot predict the details of future but one can surely prepare for it. Researchers in eLearning are capitalizing on the user-perceptions as possible predictor of the user-attitudes towards the development, use, problems and prospects of eLearning in their institutions. This application is founded on the psychological fact that a human's…

This article considers the impact of recent political decisions on the provision of teacher education and the continuing development of teachers in England. It tracks how successive governments have changed the requirements necessary to become a teacher as circumstances have changed in the country and considers the impact of these changes on…

The paper sets out a theoretical approach for understanding the quality of education in low income countries from a social justice perspective. The paper outlines and critiques the two dominant approaches that currently frame the debate about education quality, namely, the human capital and human rights approaches. Drawing principally on the ideas…

The arguments at Oxford about the start of teacher education within the University have been repeated many times and in many ways, not least in the 1972 James Committee. The strong advocacy there for much greater attention to, and investment in, continuing professional development may not have won the day in England, but, through the influence of…

A learner-centred view of education argues that the learner's needs must be understood and the learner must be engaged within the learning process. Governments advocate "learner-centred" approaches whilst introducing national strategies and systems to reach agreed standards and competencies, often globally determined. There are…

This dissertation examines the experiences of four private, liberal arts colleges--Dartmouth College, Earlham College, Franklin & Marshall College, and Swarthmore College--before, during, and after World War II to identify the adaptive policies implemented to meet the challenges that accompanied the war and its aftermath. Identification of these…

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the ongoing discussion on Ghana's education reform initiatives in the light of contemporary socioeconomic constraints, and linguistic and diversity issues. The Ghanaian education system today faces inadequate financial resources (for education programs) combined with the continuous unprecedented demand…

The paper seeks to understand how higher education policy from the European Community is defused and transferred to Armenia, a developing country. Particularly, this study aims to delve deeper in the actual implementation process of higher education reforms in Armenia through teachers' perceptions. The findings mainly reveal that teachers do long…

In 2001, The Pew Charitable Trusts learned of an important strategy that could dramatically improve children's success but had been largely overlooked by policy makers--high-quality early education programs in the years just before kindergarten. Soon after, it launched a new campaign to highlight the evidence and advance policies at the state and…

The number of deaf education teacher preparation programs and the number of program graduates were tabulated from reference issues of the "American Annals of the Deaf" beginning in 1973 and progressing every third year through 2009. Programs and graduates reached their highest levels from the mid-1970s through mid-1980s. In 2006 and…

Uganda is among many nations in sub-Saharan Africa that are trying simultaneously to expand higher education opportunities and to enhance the quality of higher-education offerings. These are particularly challenging goals in resource-rich environments and are even more difficulty in environments of more limited resources to include funding,…

Among the little truly predictable, the author suggests three truths. First is the inevitability of recessions. Second is the belief that, in prosperity, these good times will just keep on rolling. Third is the fall. Bubbles will burst, myths shatter, plans unravel and pain sadly borne unjustly by those who didn't have a hand in the decisions that…