Education & Pedagogy

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the level of quality of work life QOWL of Jordanian special education teachers. Participants of the study were 133 special education teachers. Results showed that special education teachers cited average level of QOWL. Furthermore, teachers rated administrators' and colleagues' respect as the best item of QOWL. Whereas, teachers rated participation in decision making in school as the lowest item of QOWL scale. Results also indicated no statistically significant mean differences due to teachers' gender, education levels, and type of school (mainstreaming and special education school). Recommendations for future research are presented.

We consider some peculiarities in the evolution of Russian engineering education as it underwent two radical paradigmal transformations during the past century, especially from the viewpoint of restrictions that inhibited access to higher education (HE). The driving forces of this evolution are revealed and some negative results are shown. While the former restrictions are gone, the new ones emerged as regards quality education which in part is related to the general degradation of engineering HE, in part to the stratification of the population. The new limitations can be overcome only within advanced corporations involved in innovation.

This exploratory study was designed to determine if there is a level of alignment between technology education curriculum and theories of intellectual development. The researcher compared Epstein's Brain Growth Theory and Piaget's Status of Intellectual Development with technology education curriculum from Australia, England, and the United States. The researcher hypothesized that there would be alignment between technology education curriculum, brain growth, and intellectual development theories. The results indicate that students could become more technologically literate citizens if technology education was presented to them earlier in their school careers. School systems and students may be missing an opportunity since technology education is not offered in most elementary schools.

Special education professionals serve as facilitators of Individualized Education Plan (IEP) team meetings. As special educators serve on many IEP teams during the course of an academic year, and as the member composition for each team varies, facilitators are confronted with a unique set of challenges to managing successful meetings. In this study, the authors investigate the specific types of problems and facilitator techniques occurring in IEP meetings. Findings suggest that facilitation issues and techniques are varied across special education professionals. In addition, facilitator training is needed to review and introduce facilitation techniques that may improve meeting member contributions.

The Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) held its first annual meeting in February 1920 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In the 100 years since its inception, ATE has led advocacy in issues related to teacher education. The leaders of today continue to be on the cutting edge of other major issues in research and practice in teaching and teacher education and have continued to advocate for the betterment of high quality teaching and teacher preparation not only in pre-K-12 teachers in schools but also teachers educators in institutions of higher education. In this entry, ATE presidents are interviewed about their experience leading the organization.

This article traces the evolution of special education policies and services in Vietnam from their introduction to the current expansion of inclusive education for children and youth with disabilities. Impacts reported include increased educational opportunity for and inclusion of children with disabilities, the development of national policy and provincial and local infrastructures for inclusive education, and capacity building for teachers through preservice, in-service, and master's and doctoral programs expressly designed to prepare personnel to forward inclusive education throughout the country.

Kerala State higher education policy is a narrative of the government's perpetual engagement to safeguard its regional and social equity, evolved consciously since its erstwhile princely rule. With more than three-fourths of colleges under private managements, only Kerala, in India, manages to keep at bay the pressure by the unaided private managements for a free run in education and higher education, which, with its relatively inexorable propensity to privatization and commercialization, significantly damages its equity. The Kerala State Higher Education Council, established in 2007, has been a touchstone of this policy ethos to unremittingly sustain equity, access, and excellence through state control.

What does a successful public education system look like? How does it function? How long does it take to create and what are its underpinning beliefs and values? The Canadian province of Alberta is the highest-ranking education system in the English-speaking world. What can it teach us about how to construct a successful public education system? Given the vast chasm between basic fundamental beliefs about the purpose of education, how much the question of equity should be at the forefront of educational priorities, and the importance of democratic involvement and professional autonomy, is it even possible to create a similar model?

Progress toward the Education Sustainable Development Goal 4 and achievement of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, requires partnerships, collaboration, and cooperative action at international, national, and local levels, which can be achieved and sustained using the innovative Education Diplomacy approach. The authors of this article reflect on Education Diplomacy as an innovative leadership program and describe how they employed diplomacy skills and knowledge during several stages of promoting early childhood development in the local communities of Nigeria. Education policy formulation and implementation in Nigeria will continue to advance if both state and non-state stakeholders effectively collaborate through Education Diplomacy.

This paper estimates the causal effects of education on political concern and political participation in Vietnam by employing the 1991 compulsory schooling reform to instrument for plausibly exogenous changes in education. The paper finds that, in general, education does cause favorable impacts on political outcomes. In particular, one more year of schooling, on average, results in increases in the probabilities of political concern and political participation by about 6-12 percentage points and 6-8 percentage points, respectively. This paper significantly provides suggestive evidence on the role of education in explaining political behaviors using the developing country context.

Using the 2015 data of the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), the relationship between family socioeconomic background, parent involvement, and shadow education participation was explored through structural equations. The results showed that: parent involvement strengthened shadow education participation; parent involvement played a part in the mediating role in the influence of family socioeconomic background on shadow education participation. Parent involvement activates the advantage of family socioeconomic background. Families with high socioeconomic backgrounds are more active in participating in shadow education, and families of different strata are divided into opportunities for participation in shadow education.

The HEI FET Forum was established in 2012 for the eight Higher Education Institutions who provide initial teacher education qualifications for those wishing to work as accredited teachers in the Further Education and Training (FET) Sector. Its remit is to advance teaching, learning and research in the FET sector and to widen the Forum's engagement with stakeholders across FET. The article describes the origin and purpose of the Forum and its aims amongst others to promote and strengthen the professional development of practitioners, and design and conduct relevant and useful research for the sector.

This paper examines the potential negative consequences of the internationalisation of American higher education from the perspective of positional competition theory. This analysis suggests that internationalisation efforts undertaken by colleges and universities contribute to positional competition between students vying for admission, between graduates competing for prestigious, well-paying jobs, and between higher education institutions themselves, who compete for prestige. As positional competition necessarily involves displacing other in obtaining advantage for one's self, the paper further describes how the positional competition engendered in part by the internationalisation of higher education contributes to the replication of social patterns of inequality.

This directory of promising practices in international teacher education represents an inventory of 95 programs, courses, or projects that provide an international dimension in the undergraduate teacher preparation programs of member institutions of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Organized alphabetically by program topic, e.g., Comparative Education, Social Studies, etc., each listing provides information regarding the contact person, institution, address and telephone number, brief description of the program, course name, textbooks used, and activities that provide a global perspective to students and faculty. Activities include faculty development, internships, student teaching abroad, study tours abroad, study travel abroad, and travel study abroad preparation. (CB)

This handbook is designed to serve as a reference for office education instructors. Addressed in the individual sections of the guide are the following topics: design and delivery of office education, teacher qualifications and certification requirements, cooperative programs, preemployment laboratory programs, advisory committees, public relations, student and professional organizations, and Texas Education Agency reports. Appendixes to the guide include a list of office education codes, lists of the essential curriculum elements and related study assignments required for students preparing for various office occupations, and a sample cooperative training plan. (MN)