Education & Pedagogy

Online education is becoming an increasingly popular venture for postsecondary institutions. It is an often controversial undertaking with proponents lauding the possibilities of technological advancements to increase access to education, while critics question the value and form of pedagogy on offer. This paper examines the potential and problems of online learning with reference to global geographic education. Drawing on the emergent literature on technology and education, it examines issues of design, interactivity, access, and mode, and focuses on a collaborative project between international partners to introduce the study of South Asia through an online suite to a range of students.

Within contemporary political discourses that narrowly characterize learning in terms of high-stakes standardized examinations, the value of the "social foundations of education" for teachers is increasingly questioned and challenged by those within and outside programs of teacher education. Even more troubling, prospective teachers often struggle to identify the purpose and usefulness of social foundations for their work as teachers. In this self-study, I engaged in a form of self-interviewing that I adapted to the self-study context in order to better articulate the nuances, complexities, and tensions in the purpose of social foundations for teachers' practice.

Both the commercial and education sectors experience an increase in inter-city exchanges in the forms of goods, capital, commands, people and information/knowledge under globalization. The quantification of flows and structural relations among cities in globalizing education are under-researched compared to the well-established world/global cities literature emphasizing economic linkages. In this paper, the city's global education networks are examined through the Globalizing Education Index system, which consists of place power and network power indicators. The study finds that many more cities worldwide participate in global networks, suggesting decentralized knowledge flows under globalization. Meanwhile, concentration is attested by the presence of traditional education powers at the top of city hierarchy.

While studies have examined a myriad of issues in doctoral study, much of this research has not employed the tools of major social and cultural thinkers to the dynamics of doctoral education. This paper explores the use of Bourdieu's notion of field to render visible the practices and contexts of doctoral education that produce inequalities across doctoral students. This qualitative study with 15 doctoral students in Engineering and in Philosophy demonstrated that these inequalities related to conflicted and codified rules of success within doctoral study, and students' struggle to understand these rules, and then act in ways that enable students' success in doctoral education.

The tendency that there is a global warming issue and the environmental disaster through out the world became top news in media. While scientist and politicians are gathering to find solution for the environmental issues, educators are aware of that a sustainable future needs an effective education for today's children. However, how these children should be educated on environmental issues and what they should be required in this technology age is still a question. This paper, thus, provides an intensive review of the literature on environmental education and how different instructional strategies could be used effectively in educational programs.

In fundamental economics, individuals acquired education for two broad reasons, as an investment and as consumption. The investment function of education has continued to create tension for job search leading to cases of unemployment. Entrepreneurship education and establishment of mega universities have been identified as panaceas. This paper reviewed the inter-play of expanding access with its accompanying challenges in a growing economy. Expansion of access to education is likely to be accompanied with challenges of job creation after schooling.

This paper examines the utilization of video in comparative education teaching and is shaped by two interconnected arguments. Underpinning the paper is the argument that students have certain assumptions about comparative education which are not in accordance with the complex, historical and contemporary scholarship of the field, and which thus need to be deconstructed. It is argued that video is an effective teaching tool to use to trace and unsettle such assumptions, and thus, open up the possibility for more complex comparative educational thinking to emerge in university classrooms. These uses and functions of video are explored in the paper with the help of a TV programme comparing education in Greece and Finland.

Written from the perspective of a disability practitioner and equity manager working in the Australian tertiary education sector for over twenty-five years, this paper reviews some of the significant social, equity, and education policy developments and associated legislation, which have influenced the inclusion of people with disabilities in Australian tertiary education over the past four decades. While such initiatives have encouraged aspirations and enabled increasing numbers of people with disabilities to participate in higher education, the challenge remains to create a system that is representative of the wider community and values the knowledge, skills, and experiences that people with disabilities bring to their learning, ultimately becoming places where people with disabilities can flourish.

This paper reports on the results of a narrative-grounded investigation of student teachers' intercultural experiences and learning during their teaching practice. Our interest is in the meaning of the intercultural contact zone and how education for diversities is conceptualised and reflected upon in Finnish teacher education. Critical event narratives were collected from 10 kindergarten student teachers' teaching practice portfolios where the focus was on observing and reflecting on diversities in education. Theoretically, the study relies on Pratt's theory of contact zone. The methods and conditions for supporting student teachers' understanding of diversities in teacher education are discussed.

In this article, the authors utilize core ideas from Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine the nature of education reform in two river cities. Similar to other cases of education reform in urban districts, the reforms in the two focal cities reflect at least four characteristics in common: (1) a form of portfolio management; (2) the growth of human-capital organizations; (2) the active involvement of philanthropic organizations; and (4) the role of politics. The authors consider these conditions in light of concepts from CRT and argue that this analysis provides insight into the burden of reform in urban schools.

Currently, few studies have addressed public opinions regarding math education. The current study surveyed adults in a Midwestern town in the United States to assess opinions regarding math and math education. Overall, we found that adults believe that math is useful and that math education is important. We found that parents who currently have a child in elementary school believed that math should be taught at an earlier age and were more supportive of parents being responsible for math education outside of the classroom than other participants. In this paper, we discuss some of the implications of these findings for math education.

This paper reviews discourses on multicultural education and the concept of intercultural competencies in the European and Nordic country of Finland. We focus on their present uses and perceptions by decision-makers, researchers, and also student teachers. Some prognosis for the future is made based on a short case study from art teacher education in this context. The case study represents an approach that replaces an understanding of intercultural competencies only grounded in knowledge with an approach grounded in criticality. In this way, the article represents an attempt to evaluate how intercultural competencies can and should be reconceptualised in global scholarship today.

Few studies have investigated the causal spillover effects of compulsory education on children's siblings. Using a regression discontinuity method, I find that Hong Kong's 1971 free compulsory primary education policy reduced the dropout probability for the eldest siblings of full policy beneficiaries, especially for children in low-income families. Having younger brothers who were full policy beneficiaries did not affect the elder child's educational attainment. Having younger sisters who were full policy beneficiaries increased the eldest child's educational attainment, especially for the eldest sister. The results shed light on how sibling sex composition might affect intra-household resource allocation of human capital investment among children.

Education is central to any society's civilization, growth, development, security, stability, and sustainability. That is why all progressive societies give it priority. Christian higher education meets these needs and beyond. It is rooted in God's moral vision and perspective. Its primary aim is to inculcate moral and ethical values and knowledge, which can guarantee societal security and stability as well as foster skills and opportunities that are of benefit to the Gospel of the kingdom of God and human flourishing. This paper, therefore, primarily focuses attention on the issue of Christian higher education in the context of insecurity and instability.

Dualisms pervade the language of higher education research providing an over-simplified roadmap to the field. However, the lazy logic of their popular appeal supports the perpetuation of erroneous and often outdated assumptions about the nature of modern higher education. This paper explores nine commonly occurring dualisms: collegiality/managerialism, student-centred/teacher-centred, deep learning/surface learning, academics/non-academics; research/teaching, old universities/new universities, liberal/vocational, public universities/private universities and higher education/further education. Illustrated by reference to a range of international contexts, it is argued that over-reliance on dualisms among higher education scholars has adverse effects including narrowing the possibilities of research design and inhibiting intellectual advancement within the field.