Technikon Natal is a higher education contact institution in Durban, South Africa. In the last 6 years, the Online Learning Center has evolved bottom-up, driven by the contagious creative spirit of champion lecturers. Activities have grown to such an extent that it has become necessary for the institution's management to develop an institutional…

Research efforts have shown that girls' education is a key component in improving economic and social well-being. Investment in girls' education has been related to increased productivity and labor force participation, decreased fertility and infant mortality, and increased child health. Social, institutional, and political factors that contribute…

Karnataka (India) recorded impressive growth in the 1990s, with state income growing at 8% per annum, driven largely by expansion of the industrial and service sectors. However, this impressive performance has not reduced rural poverty levels or regional disparities to a great extent. This report addresses three major concerns of policy makers in…

At the beginning of the 1990s, education in South Africa was in turmoil and experienced a major crisis. Adding to the crisis were problems such as major inequalities in South African society where the majority of people were marginalized and forced to live in a disenfranchised society. Educational change was required to provide equity in terms of…

This book, published by the World Bank, sounds the alarm for education in Europe and Central Asia (ECA). It describes how the transition from communism to free-market economies has left many countries' educational systems in disarray. At the start of transition, ECA education systems had solved problems that plagued other regions of the world,…

Three elements defined the focus of the 5th Roundtable: lifelong learning, the new technologies gap, and reaching the disadvantaged. Participants referred frequently to the digital divide, a term that captures differential access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT). The questions that guided discussion related to ICT and…

This paper focuses on developing, implementing and evaluating an online, graduate-level distance education course--the first distance-based course to be offered over the Internet for students in Turkey. The authors present experiences of setting up such a course when students and faculty are 10,000 miles apart. The limitations and difficulties…

This report shares some lessons of projects, programs, and interventions that have identified or implemented innovative approaches to managing Africa's conflicts, and examines their potential applicability to other conflicts there or elsewhere. All of the projects described in the report have been supported by grants from the United States…

This paper examines improvement in teacher education in Chile, which had an excellent system of teacher education until the 1970s. Educational change targeting elementary and secondary schools did not affect teacher education institutions, and there was no power to initiate such change. The national government pushed improvements by offering to…

This keynote address examines the social relations of information technology in the future. Examples of the recent history of technology related to transportation, printing, and nuclear energy are presented. Some troubling examples of the social relations of new information technologies that are emerging on a global scale are then discussed,…

This paper shows that, although a digital divide exists between developed and developing countries, the development of information technology (IT) and the Internet has had a profound political, social, and economic impact on developing countries. IT and the Internet revolution are shaping the world into new polarized entities due to the uneven…

Noting that foster care is in a state of flux and that existing systems of foster care are under pressure in many parts of the world, this report extracts lessons regarding the practice of foster care from a range of countries at various stages of economic and social development. The report examines foster care in the context of the family, social…

This paper describes how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are creating the knowledge society, which will impact on developing and transitional economies as well as developed nations. It argues that librarians have an important role to play in overcoming the digital divide and makes reference to the Global Knowledge Partnership.…

Viet Nam's average annual population growth rate is 2.6%, which accounts for a large youth population: 37.7% of the total population is under age 15, compared with an average of 20% in developed or newly industrialized countries. A free basic education for all children is almost impossible to provide. With consideration of the Vietnamese people's…

The research described by contributors to this special theme issue deals with the core issues of education in the context of South Africa. These issues include teacher control over the process of educational reform and balancing the need for reform with the maintenance of standards in an industrializing society. These essays demonstrate the highly…