This study examines concepts surrounding the quality of afterschool programs in Japan and related challenges using qualitative and quantitative methods. A content analysis of government guidelines for afterschool programs provided by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and…

Critical English language teaching (ELT) research is expanding in scope, covering topics such as linguistic imperialism, native-speakerism, and the intersections between issues of race, class, and gender. With this expansion comes a requirement for robust and rigorous methods of data collection and analysis for researchers to employ. This article…

Literacy studies approaches have tended to adopt a position which enables ethnographic explorations of a wide range of "literacies". An important issue arising is the new challenge required for researchers to capture, manage, and analyse data that highlight the unique character of practices around texts in digital environments. Such…

This article argues that strong interrelations between methodological and theoretical advances exist. Progress in, especially comparative, methods may have important impacts on theory evaluation. By using the example of the "Varieties of Capitalism" approach and an international comparison of higher education systems, it can be shown…

Joseph Tobin made an impact on the field of comparative education in 2009 when he used a unique form of ethnography to illuminate the effects of world-wide forces, such as modernization, on schools in specific countries. Earlier, in 1989, he published "Preschool in Three Cultures" with co-authors David Wu and Dana Davidson. The…

Since the mid 1970s, a series of international declarations that recognize the critical link between environmental sustainability and higher education have been endorsed and signed by universities around the world. While academic initiatives in sustainability are blossoming, higher education lacks a comprehensive evaluation framework that is…

Submissions to conferences can provide rich material for analysing characteristics and trends within a conference's history and that of similar conferences, as well as the associated field at large. The present study uses data gathered over 30 years from a language teachers' conference in Japan (JALT National) to expound upon patterns related to…

The author describes a research methodology for college course improvement, and applies the results to education courses. In Japan, it is usually difficult to carry out research on college course improvement, because faculty cannot introduce experimental design approaches based on control and treatment groupings of students in actual classroom…

This study is the first attempt to analyze the articles in several journals, in order to disclose the development of academic educational studies in Japan. In this paper, my examination was not limited to one journal, but covered six education journals listed below and all their issues until 2005. I chose, from a methodological viewpoint, four…

Papers from the proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society was submitted in two volumes. Volume 1 contains papers submitted at the conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria, June 14-17, 2016. Volume 2 contains papers submitted at the 4th International Partner Conference of the International Research Centre…

Results from research about language learners can be strengthened by including the learners themselves in the data analysis, and inviting them to check researcher interpretations to confirm the validity of the data, to search for alternative interpretations, and to delve deeper into their beliefs. Using critical participatory looping (CPL), the…

The recent "Nationwide academic achievement and study situation survey" was clearly influenced by the idea of "authentic assessment", an educational assessment perspective focused on "quality" and "engagement". However, when "performance assessment", the assessment method corresponding to this…

An empirically based international business research project as a component in the capstone course in undergraduate business program can serve as an effective and integrative learning and teaching tool. Initiated and supervised by the instructor, conducted and completed by the students, the research project enables students working collaboratively…

This paper presents an approach to analyzing the process of second language acquisition, entitled Interlanguage Analysis (IA). IA regards the transitional linguistic system from the learner's first language (L1) to the target language (L2 to TL) as interlanguage (IL). IA seeks to obtain pedagogical implications by clarifying: (1) the types of…

Issues and elements of case study research are explored and illustrated with the example of a case study of a kindergarten in a suburb of Tokyo (Japan). Case study research is a type of qualitative research that concentrates on a single unit or entity, with boundaries established by the researcher. The case is an example drawn from a larger class,…