Since the 1960s and before the dramatic announcement of the release of Nelson Mandela on 2 February 1990 (signalling the end of apartheid and the crossing of the proverbial Rubicon (Stone, 2014, p. 3)), the international community assisted the African National Congress (ANC) in its struggle against apartheid and put crucial pressure on the state…

Twenty-first century chemistry education researchers reported challenges in chemistry education pertaining to high school chemistry teaching-learning outcomes. Even though all studies intended to improve chemistry teaching-learning outcomes, unfortunately the impact of chemistry education research found not to be much encouraging. A few of these…

Various internal and external determinants influence an education system. External determinants include language, demographics, geography, technology, politics, and financial and economic trends. Religion is also one of these external determinants that can influence an education system, as well as the education systems of the. The BRICS member…

The involvement of East Asia, and in particular China, in the global markets has rapidly increased over the last few decades, and universities in English-speaking countries, including South Africa are increasingly accepting students from that region into their programmes. This requires the students to not only move to a locality where foreign…

This is a comparative study focused on the internationalization of teacher education in three countries--Bulgaria, Switzerland, and South Africa. The authors stress on the fact that on the one hand, teacher education is exposed to the increasing imperative to internationalize but on the other hand, teacher education is traditionally to a very…

This paper explains the concepts of Affirmative Action (AA) and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and the policies developed in post-Apartheid South Africa. It compares it to similar policies adopted in different contexts in Malaysia, India and the U.S.A. It explains and critiques the South African policies on AA and BEE, its history since 1994 and…

This paper compares the motivations of two developing countries, South Africa and Mauritius, in promoting doctoral education. Both are concerned about addressing their underproduction of PhDs, but is this focus a luxury in the face of prevalent societal issues, e.g., the HIV/AIDS pandemic, crime and unemployment in South Africa? Are PhDs resolving…

Cooperative and Work-integrated Education (CWIE) programs have been widely accepted as educational programs that can effectively connect what students are learning to the world of work through placements. Because a global quality standards framework could be a very valuable resource and guide to establishing, developing, and accrediting quality…

Planning in education is a structured activity that includes several phases and steps that take into account several kinds of information (Steyn, Steyn, De Waal & Wolhuter, 2002: 146). One of the sets of information that are usually considered is the (so-called) "benchmarks" and "benchmarking" regarding the focus of a…

International literacy tests, such as PIRLS show that South African primary school learners compare negatively with their peers in other parts of the world. Added to this, learners in rural schools in the country perform significantly worse than their peers who attend schools in urban areas, with the former learners also having other challenges,…

Interest is growing in the potential of international intercultural teaching practicums to connect students to international dimensions of education and to productively disturb the conceptions of teaching, diversity and culture that some pre-service teachers bring with them into their teaching. This paper reports on an international teaching…

Background: Assessment of students for ministerial practice is traditionally performed through assignments and oral examinations, which often only concentrate on the knowledge component and outcomes of the programme. Assessing students in this way lead to a view of religious practitioners as people who are not really in touch with their…

In partnership with Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Center for Minority Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, Salzburg Global Seminar hosted an international strategic dialogue of 60 thought leaders, researchers, and practitioners from institutions serving marginalized populations to…

The legacy of South Africa's destructive history is still evident in the different worlds in which South Africans live. Quality education is compromised by violence occurring in schools and role-players must face school violence and take steps to deal with it. This can only be done if school violence is deeply understood within the various school…

Perhaps because educational achievement often has been associated with elite status, the organization and focus of education nearly everywhere in the modern era reflects international influences, some more forceful than others. In this era, with few exceptions, the direction of influence is from European core to southern periphery. Institutional…