Educational authorities across countries are concerned to promote the well-being of their children. We discuss the approach that two systems, China and New Zealand, have adopted to support the development of well-being. The Chinese system has roots in the Confucian education tradition, Westernization Movement, and Soviet education lessons. It is…

Mathematics teachers, mathematics department heads, curriculum leaders, and administrators from 11 schools in four school boards from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, participated in a project to improve the teaching and learning in grade 9 mathematics classrooms. In each of these schools, an implementation team was created, so that at least three…

This paper attempts to discuss how the Singapore Education System is shifting towards student-centred designs and pedagogies, yet retaining a unique Singaporean orientation. It complements the McKinsey report by analysing directives and efforts to understand trade-offs, consequences, and insights for moving forward. The paper uses an ecological…

The meteoric increase in technological advancement in the last few decades has dramatically transformed how people live their lives. Innovation is seen to be essential as it ensures sustainable growth in a knowledge-based economy and a competitive global marketplace. Consequently, enabling innovation to occur becomes of prime concern to educators…

Following a major shift in Swiss teacher education in the 1990s, teachers are now educated at the university level with a more research-oriented focus than before the reform. Furthermore, the curriculum in teacher education is not only more academically oriented, but also concurrently practice-focused. Swiss student teachers are highly involved in…

This article discusses the relationship between policy, research and practice in the Singapore education landscape in response to Hargreaves and Shirley's arguments of Fourth Way principles of educational change. Examples of recent policy developments in Singapore are used to illustrate the interaction between judicial uses of research data and…

Policy makers are often looking for solutions to develop their educational systems in today's highly competitive knowledge-based economy. Hargreaves and Shirley's Fourth Way provides a useful approach in analysing policy trends, successes and pitfalls, based on an observation of practices and research evidences in the west, particularly, the USA…

In recent years, education systems around the world have been keeping a keen eye on rankings of student achievement as measured by internationally benchmarked tests. This has led to considerable attention being paid to teasing out success factors that may account for countries that have emerged top of the ranks or those that have shown the most…

This article has two main objectives. It first outlines the first three waves of change termed by Hargreaves and Shirley (The Fourth Way: The inspiring future for educational change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, "2009") as the First, Second and Third Way that defined global educational policy and practice since the 1960s. It then…

The current emphasis of many mathematics education reform documents is on the need to change the environment of mathematics classrooms from the transmission of knowledge by the teacher to the transaction of knowledge between the teacher and the students which promotes mathematical investigation and exploration. In this article, we discuss the…

Internationalization becomes increasingly important in higher education in a globalized world. Exporting higher education services by recruiting overseas students is an integral facet of internationalization of higher education. It not only helps develop the place as an education hub but also facilitate internationalized environment of higher…

China is now facing significant challenges in funding its rapidly expanding higher education systems, though it has experienced enormous economic growth in recent years. Equity has become a serious concern in Chinese higher education system. This article tries to identify the causes and implications of under-representation of the rural-poor…

This article argues that a commonly neglected dimension in service-learning pedagogy is the consideration of community perspectives in developing these service-learning projects. Areas considered in this study were: (1) Community members' needs and problems, (2) Community members' perceived roles and participation, and (3) Community members'…

By 2020 our world will have changed and with it the shape and role of education and of educational research. One cannot predict the future, but in this paper three possible scenarios are outlined reflecting alternative approaches of government to the economic, political, social and environmental challenges facing the Asia Pacific region. For each…

Differences and contradictions in understanding education policies such as "Teach Less, learn More" may cause confusion between the intended meaning and actual implementation. Approaches to understanding public policy, such as discourse analysis, are useful for highlighting such differences, but do not explain how these differences may be…