Education & Pedagogy

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is an area of great importance for the ethnic minorities of northwestern China, and the development of local minority education has been a constant concern in both government and academic spheres. By means of analyzing government documents, statistical data and research literature, this article attempts to define the fundamental modes and development processes of minority education in Xinjiang. Furthermore, the article elaborates on discussion of the development and problems relevant to bilingual education in the concentrated Uyghur communities of southern Xinjiang based on the author's field research in the Kashgar Prefecture in 2007.

Globalisation, the internationalisation of academia as a whole, and the Bologna Process have recently placed European higher education in a state of change. By critically reading policies and documents on internationalisation from 16 universities in Australia, Canada, Sweden and the US, three internationalisation ideologies (idealism, instrumentalism and educationalism) in higher education are analysed. Areas of similarities and differences are discussed--especially with regard to desired learning outcomes and the ideological rationales for international education. It is concluded that these policies and documents as well as the Bologna Process largely disregard issues pertaining to the teaching methods and contents of international education.

International students enrolling in American universities may receive education on alcohol use because alcohol consumption is a key concern across American colleges and universities. However, general alcohol education often overlooks the specific cultural, language, and learning needs of international students. This article reviews one current alcohol education program, AlcoholEdu, on a college campus and uses specific examples from international students and the literature to recommend a culturally appropriate alcohol education framework for international students to assist with social, cultural, and educational adjustments related to the college experience. (Contains 2 tables.)

The purpose of this article is to provide information to general physical education teachers on how to conduct a self-contained adapted physical education (APE) class. The article begins with an example of a traditional model for a self-contained APE class, where all students work on the same goals using basically the same equipment and activities. This is then contrasted with an alternative model that corresponds to the students' individualized education program (IEP), in which students work on individually prescribed goals and objectives. (Contains 2 figures.)

Children with disabilities are one of the many groups of children still not enrolled in primary education in developing countries. However, their educational exclusion and right to education are now receiving more policy attention. This paper reviews some of the key issues and challenges in relation to disability, education and development: definitions and data, policies, service delivery and finance, and capacity development. Drawing on a review of education sector planning and provision in 28 developing countries and other literature, the paper makes comparative reference to policy and practice in a number of developed and developing country contexts.

This article examines a common problem in higher education--how to create more widespread use of improved practices, often commonly referred to as innovations. I argue that policy models of scale-up are often advocated in higher education but that they have a dubious history in community development and K-12 education and that higher education leaders should shirk policymakers' push to use a scale-up model of change. These thoughts are conceptual and are based upon a critical review of literature in community development and K-12, but I also draw upon empirical data in reviewing examples of widespread use of innovations in higher education.

Home education in Germany is a contravention to the school law, and severe sanctions are applied against it. Despite this, a small home education movement has developed within the last 25 years. This article, after a short overview of home education in Germany, examines the reasons why a policy with sanctions fails to deter homeschooling. Then I point out why the legitimate interests of the state and the child, which are usually given to justify the prohibition of home education, might be better served if home education were legal but regulated and controlled. (Contains 2 notes.)

Offering an alternative to normative teacher education that excludes meaningful sexuality and gender education from its curriculum, this article presents a critical teacher education multicultural curriculum based in the United States that included an autoethnographic narrative assignment as reflective space for teacher candidates to consider their identities as shaped by lived experiences with gender and sexuality. Using a categorical analysis of a cohort of 38 teacher candidate autoethnographies, discussed are insights revealed about their lived histories. Patterns included gender identification, heteronormativity, patriarchy, sex education, schooling experiences, teacher complicity, and teacher identity effects and sense of agency along with implications for educating future teachers.

Agricultural and environmental higher education has changed greatly over the past four decades. This article provides a personal review of the factors influencing this change. Economics, social attitudes and developments in technology and in theories of learning have all affected both what and how students need to learn. This is illustrated with examples from distance learning, where the need to provide students with a clearly structured educational experience is paramount. The paper also examines the implications of changing conceptions of environment, of the role of agriculture and a more constructivist epistemology for education and environmental action.

From the unique perspective gained heading Obama's education policy transition team, Darling-Hammond describes President Obama's commitment to making the education of every child a collective responsibility and reviews the major tenets of the new administration's plans for education. She reflects on the importance of suggested policy changes, particularly focusing on the importance of legislation to improve teacher capacity and retention. Finally, she considers how the field of education might look in 2016 should the Obama administration's education agenda succeed as planned. (Contains 2 notes.)

This study examines whether participation in a 13-week undergraduate inclusive education course covaried with an improvement in the self-efficacy of preservice elementary education teachers. We sought to determine whether self-efficacy was influenced differentially by the type of field-based placement experienced by students in the course. The results showed that an improvement in student self-efficacy co-varied with participation in the inclusive education course, although the field-based placement did not differentially affect self-efficacy at a statistically significant level. (Contains 1 table.)

While availability of information and access to it enables education in developing countries, information alone does not secure transmission of knowledge--especially to remote learners in low-tech, infrastructure-poor communities. For this reason, 21st century distance education tools require innovative mechanisms for accessing the hardest-to-reach learners. This paper explores an ethnographic case study from Nepal as a means for illuminating the possibility for expanding the right to education in developing countries through an innovative approach: the microfranchising of microlearning centers. (Contains 4 images and 4 resources.)

In every faith community, worship and education should be conceived and practiced as interdependent, interpenetrating dimensions of ecclesial life. Too often, however, worship and education are separated and compartmentalized to the detriment of both. This article explores a way to understand the inherent unity of worship and education and proposes a structure of ecclesial life in which each is necessary to the other. Putting education and worship in conversation yields new clarity regarding the liturgical nature of ministry and the micro- and macroscopic perspectives of education. Significant implications are drawn, especially with respect to the important insights that an educational perspective can bring to pastoral leadership in the community. (Contains 5 figures and 6 footnotes.)

This article reviews the pertinent research literature on metaphors in teaching and teacher education. The main purpose is to explore these metaphors as evidences of prospective and practicing teachers' reasoning about teaching, learning, and schooling. The current review is organized around the major functions of metaphor in education. In this way, it is intended to contribute to the existing scholarly research in the field of teaching and teacher education stemming largely from metaphor analysis. The present essay discusses 10 distinct functions of metaphor in education and provides illustrative studies for each function. It strongly argues for the inclusion of various educational metaphors in teacher education programs because of their functional benefits.

Hong Kong has undergone a series of educational reforms since the mid 1990s in response to the tidal wave of globalisation. This article tries to examine the recent education reforms in Hong Kong's higher education within the global context, by putting into perspective a discussion of its policy implications of marketisation, privatisation and corporatisation, through the examination of three important dimensions of education governance, namely: regulation, provision and financing. It finally concludes that the higher education governance in Hong Kong is transforming itself with a new state-education relationship under the impact of globalisation. (Contains 2 tables.)