In response to the recent heightened interethnic conflicts that were regarded as threatening national unity and stability, the Chinese government issued "ethnic solidarity education" as a top-down, centrally administered mandate to be implemented "correctly" and in a standardised way by schools throughout China. This paper…

In this article, the author explores the market phenomenon revealed in the practice of a mixed-ability grouping policy in Taiwan, and traces the influence of the wider educational contexts on the formation of the market phenomenon. Although there have been no major policies introduced with the intention of creating a market mechanism in Taiwanese…

This study proposes an elaboration of the human development capability approach by theorizing empowerment capabilities as an essential aspect of the education of excluded village girls. Seeking to explain Chinese village girls' demand for schooling, the article identifies intangible and instrumental capabilities that have often been…

Most existing research indicates that working students perform more poorly than do full-time students on standardized achievement tests. However, we know there are wide international variations in this gap. This article shows that national and international contexts help to explain the gap in the academic performance between working and nonworking…

Cram schooling is believed by students and their parents to have positive effects on learning achievement in Taiwan. Using two waves of panel data gathered by the Taiwan Education Panel Study (TEPS) in 2001 and 2003 and the method of propensity score matching (PSM), the present research found that the average treatment effect for participants of…

The government of Ghana has designed various initiatives to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on education and the Education for All goals. Despite these initiatives, student outcomes continue to be poorer than desired. Although access to education has improved, student dropout remains a problem and student scores on achievement tests…

This article uses life course theory and family bargaining theory to explore how decisions over schooling are negotiated in poorer Mexican families for whom compulsory basic education is a luxury. It explores educational decision making by conceptualizing education in terms of the way it meshes with other social relations and institutions across…

The paper presents findings from a research project undertaken at the Taman Rama Gandhi School in Bali during the first anniversary week of the Bali Bombings in 2003. It explores the school's response to four key components of Gandhi's model of Basic Education ("Nai Talim") and shows that the claimed curriculum is framed by two contradictory…

The aims of this study were to explore the organisational characteristics of junior high schools, to identify typologies of work environments and to explore the relationships between the type of work environment and how schools function. The educational profession and the role of teachers have been influenced by policies inspired by the principles…

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…

In this article we reflect on data from two research projects in which inclusive practice in the educational system is at issue, in the light of wider field experience (our own and others') of school and teacher development. We question what we understand to be relatively common, implicit policy assumptions about how teachers develop, by examining…