This paper presents an overview of a situational analysis of inclusive schooling in Spain from the perspective of students with special educational needs. The purpose of this work was to learn how young people collectively considered their experiences of school inclusion. The participants--aged 12-19 years who attended six different…

In recent years Portugal has experienced a severe financial and economic crisis, with implications for all sectors of society, particularly education. Salary cuts, high rates of unemployment, high taxation and worsening career progression are just some ways in which the teaching profession has been affected. Recent policy changes have also…

Numerous primary and post-primary communities of practice (CoP) are used as educational change mechanisms to support teachers improving physical education (PE) practice in Irish schools. This study's purpose was to examine perspectives of program facilitators and participants of Irish PE CoP created to address teachers' interests. Specifically…

It is commonly assumed that company training is one of the first casualties in times of recession. Falling recruitment, pressures to cut costs and a focus on short-term survival force businesses to put training on the backburner. Expecting the worst, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)…

Increasing attention to climate change and the current global economic crisis has underscored the need for approaches to education that equip and empower people of all ages to deal with uncertain environmental, economic and political futures. A range of educational and research initiatives already exist which could support this aim, however,…

This paper presents a perspective on the capacity of colleges and universities during past and present economic shocks. The main argument is that the environment of the global recession--an Asia far more economically integrated than during past economic shocks, with more unified aspirations to be globally competitive and socially responsible--no…

Colleges are already a distinctive part of the mainstream higher education (HE) sector. This article discusses whether the prospect of an increased role in the provision of HE could prove the silver lining for colleges in an otherwise tough spending review settlement. The financial picture seems to be mixed. Colleges, like universities, are faced…

Using a global-local dialectic approach, this paper traces the rise of the basic education programme in the 1980s and 1990s in Botswana and its subsequent attenuation in the 2000s. Amongst the local forces that led to the rise of BEP were Botswana's political project of nation-building; the country's dire human resources situation in the decades…

This book comes at a time of increasing anxiety about the repercussions of financial instability and the probability of widespread market volatility. The educators and researchers whose work is collected here have considered these factors deeply when constructing their responses to prevailing financial conditions. These views guide the reader…

Local, state, and national economies are facing unprecedented levels of international competition. The current fiscal crisis has hampered the ability of many governments in the developed world to directly facilitate economic growth. At the same time, many governments in the developing world are investing significant new resources into local…

Imaginary worlds have been devised by artists and commentators for centuries to focus satirical attention on society's problems. The increasing sophistication of three-dimensional graphics software is generating comparable "virtual worlds" for educational usage. Can such worlds play a satirical role suggesting developments in distance…

Higher education in the United States has received much scrutiny in the recent past from the federal and state governments, the press and the general public. In response to this scrutiny, a number of blue ribbon panels have been formed to examine how effectively higher education is serving American society. In this article, I analyse the…

The global rise of Internet-based education is discussed in relation to models drawn from social studies and epidemiology. Experiential and data density models are highlighted, also the capacity for technological change, and phenomena observed in the spread of disease. The lesson of these illustrations is that even apparently permanent phenomena…

The purpose of this Resource Agent Project was to assist the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the postsecondary education enterprise in developing policy and program responses to the diverse problems associated with a changing economy. The project's three functions were to (1) examine policy directions related to the…

"Education at a Glance 2011: Highlights" offers a reader-friendly introduction to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) collection of internationally comparable data on education. As the name suggests, it is derived from "Education at a Glance 2011", the OECD's flagship compendium of education…