This article explores the extent to which participation in alternative human values education affects students' conceptions of agency amidst the economic and HIV/AIDS crises in Ndola, Zambia. Drawing on the concept of transformative agency as developed by critical research in education, this study examines conceptions of agency based on data…

While the importance of attending early learning programmes is increasingly evident, the provision of early learning programmes in developing countries has not grown in parallel. In this paper we examine how attendance in early learning programmes for children aged 3-6 years, the recommended period, differs within and across 52 developing…

This paper focuses on the World Bank/IMF (International Monetary Fund), the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) and the WTO (World Trade Organisation) as institutions of transnational policy making. They are all at present making education policies which are decisively shaping current directions and developments in…

Efforts to improve the "quality" of education for all in government primary schools in India have seen a shift towards child-centred teaching. This paper examines the "Joyful Learning" programme, an example of a pedagogic reform implemented in rural primary schools in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Through an empirical analysis of…

This paper highlights some tensions regarding lifelong learning discourses for countries which are listed in the lower part of international development indexes. Such countries are often referred to collectively as the "South", though this represents a political focus rather than geographical accuracy and usually represents those formerly…

This paper explores tensions in translating multilingual language policy to classroom linguistic practice, and especially the paradoxical role of and demand for English as a tool of decolonization for multilingual populations seeking equitable access to a globalizing economy. We take an ecological and sociolinguistic approach, depicting tensions…

Business expansion in the 1960s and its associated international strategies have meant that many Japanese company employees and their families were sent abroad on long-term assignments. The children who accompanied their parents on such assignments and then returned to Japan were first described as "educational refugees" and were regarded as…

In this paper I reflect on the experience of working with Taiwanese art educators. The data I revisit comes from participation in four art education conferences between 1995 and 2001, a three-month period of residence at Changhua University of Education teaching a master's programme, three intensive summer programmes organised for Taiwanese art…

While schools play a major role in promoting parental involvement in schooling in many countries, few comparative studies examined the level of school expectation for parental involvement and its effect on student achievement. Using the TIMSS 1999 dataset, this study examined the level of school expectation for various types of parental…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between teachers' classroom discipline techniques and students' individual and communal responsibility in Australian, Chinese, and Israeli classrooms. The sample comprised 5521 students in grades 7-12 and 748 teachers. The participating Australian, Chinese, and Israeli schools included both…

This article draws upon a research project funded by the ESRC (R000239387) that tracked the development of adult literacy, numeracy and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) from the 1970s to 2000 in England using life-history interviews and documentary policy analysis to compare policy, practitioner and learner perspectives. The article…

This study represents an initial attempt to determine and compare the levels of the intercultural sensitivity of three samples of student teachers in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). A total of 317 student teachers participated in the study. Across the three samples, the majority of…

This article analyses the impact of competitive arenas on schools' logics of action in six local European contexts (London, Paris, Lille, Charleroi, Budapest and Lisbon). It first examines how competitive processes affect different schools' activities (recruitment, provision of options, promotion, tracking, provision for children with special…

Our purpose is to document convergences and divergences in the mode of institutional regulation of the education systems in five European countries (Belgium, England, France, Hungary and Portugal). On the national level, partially convergent policies create, to varying degrees and with different temporal rhythms, variants of a post-bureaucratic…

Since 1999, European education ministers have discussed and further implemented the "Bologna process", a wide-ranging framework for the reform of higher education. Lifelong learning was added as a goal of the process in 2001. This article evaluates the extent to which the development of lifelong learning has progressed and examines whether the…