Leading intellectual figures in the school reform movement, all of them favoring approaches centered around the value of competition and choice, outline different visions for the goal of choice-oriented educational reform and the best means for achieving it. This volume takes the reader inside the movement to empower parents with choice, airing…

From 2008-2009 the author was commissioned by AONTAS in partnership with Irish Aid to carry out a piece of research which aimed to examine how there could be a strategic focus on the integration of development education, or incorporating a global dimension to learning, into adult and community education in Ireland. It also examined whether or not…

This paper outlines research undertaken during a study visit to The Gambia (2008) and our thinking about the value of this, and other such visits for education students. The qualitative methodology made use of interviews and reflective journals. We argue that such visits may have the power to transform peoples' values and, drawing on literature on…

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization has generated an intense and passionate debate about the relationship between free-trade and education and, specifically, about the effects of trade liberalization in national education systems. This article explores in detail this debate from a critical discourse…

There has been a growing amount of research on low-fee private schools in less economically developed countries, but much less on low-fee private schools in developed countries. Yet, low-fee private schools have also been a recent feature of the educational landscape in countries such as Canada, the USA, Australia and Great Britain. This paper…

The social purposes of education are long term and oriented towards the construction and maintenance of a sustainable future. This article focuses on developing-country contexts with relatively low formal school enrolment rates, where dropout and failure rates are alarming, and where many children leave school semi-literate, soon to relapse into…

This work starts with a brief overview of education in developing countries, to contextualise the use of the guidelines. Although this document is intended to be a practical tool, it is necessary to include some theoretical analysis of the concept of online assessment. This is given in Sections 3 and 4, together with the identification and…

This study was conducted to understand the determinant of mobile devices for learning among students in the developing world. A sample of 247 undergraduate students from Malaysia and Nigeria were involved in the study. An adapted but modified survey instrument was used to gather the data of the study. The variable of the study are perceived…

This paper reports on recent research into enterprise skill profiles and workplace training practices in the Bangladesh manufacturing industry. The article presents survey and interview data for 37 enterprises across eight manufacturing sectors collected during a study for the International Labour Organisation. The research analysed enterprise and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the contours of the emerging business education and institutions in a multi-polar world and to identify the causes of the strategic convergence of management education, to explore the limitations of the dominant models of management education and to propose a range of strategic alternatives for…

Existing studies from the United States, Latin America and Asia provide scant evidence that private schools dramatically improve academic performance relative to public schools. Using data from Kenya--a poor country with weak public institutions--we find a large effect of private schooling on test scores, equivalent to one full standard deviation.…

This study examines factors that contribute to the cross-border movement of international students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. It analyzes characteristics of host countries (pull factors) associated with international students' arrival for education in STEM fields, as well as characteristics of home…

This study examines how the non-conventional factors of national cultural values and government involvement affect the diffusion of broadband Internet technologies in various nations around the world. An innovative element of the study was the examination of the influence patterns at different stages of diffusion, which was measured by the number…

The world faces pervasive poverty and inequality. Hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid have been given or loaned to developing countries though bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, at least, ostensibly, in order to do something about these problems. Has such aid helped? Debates around this question have been ongoing for decades,…

The impact of the financial crisis on higher education has been considerable, and its effects are continuing. These effects can be discerned in a number of ways; but whereas both developed and developing countries are affected, they can be affected differently. A modifying factor is the shape and structure of the higher education system within…