In this article the author discusses some issues with conducting historical research, rooted in her own experiences. She focuses on four main points: minimising one's own biases, choosing a suitable research question, evaluating the quality of the sources and providing a balanced interpretation of events. She argues that using a historical…

In this article, adult learner experiences of embedded literacy and numeracy within vocational programmes in New Zealand are explored and described to identify what these learners felt had contributed to their success as learners. The embedded approach is a distinctive feature of the adult literacy and numeracy education infrastructure in New…

The purpose of this study was to examine the views of American and Japanese early childhood teachers regarding the nurturing of young children's moral development using literature. The data consisted of responses to a questionnaire and written explanations of 36 American and 36 Japanese teachers. By comparing responses of the two groups, it was…

This article examines the impact of Lebanon's civil war (1975-1991) on disparities in education among the country's main religious sects and across various regions. District of registration is adopted as a proxy for religious affiliation through a novel, detailed classification to assess sectarian differentials by region and regional differentials…

Private tutoring is a common and worldwide phenomenon. However, there is a dearth of up-to-date research on private tutoring compared with that on institutional one-to-one teaching, which could be explained by challenges associated with data collection. This article proposes using publicly available online advertisements of private tutors as a…

The purpose of this study was to examine similarities and differences in perspectives of fathering among American, Chinese, Japanese and Swedish in-service and pre-service early childhood teachers. The participants in the quantitative survey consisted of 67 American in-service and 277 pre-service teachers, 118 Chinese in-service and 163…

The flight of human capital is a phenomenon that has been of concern to academics and development practitioners for decades. Unfortunately, there is no systematic record of the number of skilled professionals that many African countries have continued to lose to the developed world. Termed the "brain drain", it represents the loss of…

Since 1971, scholarship on community college global counterparts has documented the nuances of these institutions and charted their similarities to one another. The purpose of this article is to detail the first three decades of community college global-counterpart scholarship from 1971-2001. Within each decade there exists scholarship that…

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is a national citizen-led rapid assessment of children's ability to read simple text and do basic arithmetic. ASER is designed and facilitated by the Indian nongovernment organisation Pratham, and has been conducted every year since 2005 by partner organisations in every rural district of India,…

Over the past three decades, the number of developing countries participating in International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) has increased dramatically, while developing countries' usage of data from ILSAs for informing educational policy has not been fully realised. In this paper the authors argue that for ILSAs to be useful policy tools,…

Germany has relied on its well-established tradition of preparing the workforce through the so-called dual system of practical in-firm training (apprenticeships) and theoretical foundations conveyed by vocational schools. Believing in the high quality of academic school programmes that prepare a small elite for university studies, the German…

This article highlights the rationale for Namibia's participation in three studies which were conducted under the auspices of the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) during the period 1995-2007. The article provides some of the innovative ways in which the results of the first (SACMEQ I, 1995)…

This special issue of Research in Comparative and International Education investigates the spread and development of two-year and community college institutions worldwide. While not all post-secondary education falls within the scope or definition of community colleges, both post-secondary and community college education tend to serve the needs of…

This article deals with paradoxical relationships between Israeli universities and colleges and their effect on the system of higher education. The article analyzes the history of the higher-education discourse, ranging from patronizing and domineering relations to collaboration based on the recognition that Israel's entire system of higher…

As part of its flagship educational study--the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)--the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has undertaken extensive work to create an internationally relevant composite indicator aimed at measuring socioeconomic background. However, the degree to which a single measure of…