In 2007, Kenya erupted into violence as a result of heavily contested elections. Because identity divisions lay at the heart of the conflict, the nation's public universities were deeply impacted, at times pitting students, faculty, and staff against one another, and disrupting the ability of Kenyan higher education to contribute to the…

Several international declarations, signed over the last few decades, are helping to promote Education for All, by eliminating inequalities in both society and education systems. This article, a descriptive review of policy documents and reform initiatives, reports on ways the Government of Bangladesh has responded to these international…

Starting in the 1970s, Brazil developed a very complex system of quantitative assessments of education at all levels, making extensive use of statistical information and tests, in an effort to improve and maintain the quality of its education. However, with some exceptions, particularly at the graduate level, Brazilian education standards remain…

With the advent of school-based management, citizen committees in low-income countries or areas are often expected to oversee the functioning of schools, health centres, and other community resources. However, studies of their effectiveness show mixed results. Though members of such committees may be able to repair buildings, they often cannot…

The authors of this article describe an essential feature of inclusive educational practice: "non-abandonment". When students' needs and difficult behavior are overwhelming, teachers may abandon them emotionally as a defensive reaction to their own experience of emotional distress and helplessness. Non-abandonment represents a…

In the context of the curriculum reform in Niger, the authors describe the process of developing a situations bank which focusses on everyday life situations in Niger. The bank plays a central role in the formulation of new study programmes guided by the so-called "situated" approach. The authors also describe various issues that arose…

The author reports on an exploratory study to establish a semantic base for the concept of competence in the French-speaking literature on education. Doing so will make it possible to identify neighbouring concepts or notions that researchers can use to determine definitions and applications for the concept. The research team found only one…

The authors analyse epistemological beliefs and their relationship to the knowledge developed by students engaged in a reorganized programme of training for secondary school teachers in Quebec. They examine two contexts for initial training: the training in their discipline that university students follow, and the practical training students…

Many countries are now creating world-class universities (WCUs) as essential parts of their higher education reform agendas, and as national goals. It is legitimate to ask whether every country that aspires to build a WCU can do so--especially developing countries. To answer this question, this paper provides a three-step framework. The first step…

This study analyzes how access to public and private institutions of higher education in Chile has changed as the post-secondary system has become increasingly privatized. It analyses access by young people to higher education from four perspectives: funding type (public/private), gender, family income level, and ethnicity. The study uses…

This paper discusses the degree to which recently reported relationships between the classroom management techniques and coping styles of Australian teachers apply in two other national settings: China and Israel. Little is known about which teacher characteristics relate to their approach to classroom management, although researchers in Australia…

In national education systems worldwide, teacher quality has become synonymous with education reform efforts, but a more elusive goal is empirically measuring teacher quality. One proposed measure of teacher quality, teacher licensing, also known as certification, is an increasingly ubiquitous component of national education systems and…

By evaluating the impact of policies to financially support university students in Georgia, this article demonstrates the systematic spatial disparities that exist in a context of formally equal competition. The author uses a mixed-methods design, combining quantitative evidence on the entire population of Georgian university applicants in…

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…

Poor-quality, or completely absent, data deny millions of children the right to an education. This is often the case in conflict-ridden areas. The 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO 2011b) identified four failures that are holding back progress in education and damaging millions of children's lives: failures of protection,…