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The aim of this study is to identify the most prolific countries in the field of special education and to discuss the widespread impact of their papers by taking into account the country's h-index. Through a bibliometric analysis, the data were collected in the Web of Science Core Collection category "Education, Special" in the Social Science Citation Index during 2011-2020. The 25 most prolific countries in the field of special education were determined in terms of paper productivity, and it was seen that the leading country was undisputedly the USA (54.42%). Meanwhile, a strong positive correlation was found between the h-index and the number of papers published by the countries (r=0.864). On the other hand, when the ranking in terms of the number of papers was reconfigured by the h-index, it was relatively changed. The possible reasons for this change for the countries with the most changing rankings were discussed by considering some definitive criteria such as the journal quartiles, the percentage of international and domestic, and the percentage of open access papers. This study reports a positive correlation between the quality and quantity in the field of special education for the publications of countries. It has been shown that where the positive correlation deviates, then especially, the journal quartiles, the percentage of international collaboration and the percentage of open access papers have a significant effect. The bibliometric findings may be useful to enrich the discussion about the widespread impact of papers and debate whether the use of h-index is acceptable for cross-national comparisons.

Context: Existing studies have explored the association between workplace training and wages suggesting that training participation may have a positive association with wages. However, we still know very little about whether this association varies between men and women. Through its potential positive association with wages, training may balance wage differences between men and women. In addition, the gender wage gap varies across the wage distribution. Differences in the association between training participation and wages for men and women across the earnings spectrum may offer an explanation as to why the discrepancy in female/male earnings is larger at some point of the wage distribution compared to others. Approach: Using data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and unconditional quantile regression, this paper examines whether the association between workplace training and wages differs between men and women at different points of the wage distribution across 14 European countries. To partly control for endogeneity in training participation, detailed measures of cognitive skills have been included in the models. Findings: Findings show gender differences in the association between training and wages across the wage distribution. In most countries, results indicate larger training coefficients for women than men at the lower end of the wage spectrum whereas they are larger for men at the top. This pattern holds across most countries with the only exception of Liberal ones, where women benefit less than men across the entire wage spectrum. Conclusions: The findings of this work reveal that distributional variations in returns to workplace training follow a similar pattern across industrialized countries, despite their different institutional settings. Moreover, differences in training coefficients of men and women at different parts of the wage distribution suggest that training could reduce gender wage differences among low earners and potentially widen the gap in wages among individuals at the top of the wage distribution.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to drastic measures around the world, which have also affected the education system. Schools were closed in the spring of 2020 in almost every country in the world, and many children and young people are still involved in distance learning to this day. What effect these measures have on children's and young people's learning performance is important in view of the time pressure under which educational policy decisions have to be taken. The rapid review presented in this paper delivers evidence on the effects of school closures to contain the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020 on children's and young people's learning performance in five countries (USA, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany).

Preschool education is an education process that prepares children for primary education, provides the training and upbringing conditions in the home and also aims to remove the inequalities in terms of language and society in the early period. The audit is to evaluate learning and all the factors that affect learning and also prepare the environment and conditions for effective learning. The purpose of this research was to develop a comprehensive point of view for preschool education audit in the world and our country. Document analysis that is one of the qualitative research methods were utilized in this paper as the method. The documents related to the systems in France, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Russia, China, Israel, America, Saudi Arabia, Japan, India Jordan, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Kosovo and Turkey were researched out within the scope of this study.

This paper presents qualitative research examining to what extent sojourns abroad engage their participants in intercultural interactions and whether or not such experience translates into students' intercultural growth. The results of the study demonstrated that studying abroad did not provide students with ample opportunities to immerse into the local community and fully discover a new cultural environment. However, students surrounded by local and their fellow international students met foreign cultures, which motivated them to explore and interpret the encountered diversity, and thus equipped them with knowledge about foreign cultures, sensitizing them to cultural diversity. Sometimes such contacts challenged students' preconceived judgments and stereotypes of specific cultural groups, their ways of thinking, valuing and acting, and resulted, to a lesser or greater extent, in rethinking these, leading to changing attitudes and values. International experiences also stimulated students to self-analyze their own cultural identity, and thereby contributed to their growth in self-awareness in this respect. By offering opportunities for experiencing cultural differences and prompting students to develop coping strategies and to make references to the home culture, the sojourn is thus of significant importance for tertiary students, allowing for fostering their intercultural development to a certain degree.

Communication is an indispensable part of international cooperation and it requires managing different cultures. Being prepared to see and understand different values, trying to understand contrasting views in a consortium, can decrease the potential of misperception which otherwise may act as a real barrier to cooperation. This is why international cooperation necessitates negotiation across cultures. In the case of collaboration, parties come together for a joint work which itself may create common values/understanding, besides the set goals. This is because collaboration requires strong we-feeling and commitment. The purpose of this paper is to focus on cross-cultural communication and collaboration in the area of Open and Distance Learning (ODL), concentrating on the communication processes in project management. Cross-cultural studies point to different communicative behaviours of individuals in multinational work environments e.g. the cultural characteristics affect the preferences towards the use of the media. For the purposes of this paper, the authors make a phenomenological-oriented case study of project management based on interviews with partners of a multilateral Grundtvig (adult learning) project, affiliated with distance education institutions in eight different countries. The authors test their assumptions for constructive and cooperative communication in e-Learning projects; delineating the effects of different cultures as regards the expectations from (1) international projects and (2) communication media.

Managing people requires ongoing living in a harmony and to educate citizens who would support this status. It is not easy to continue the existence of management which can perform different cultures. The different management style is different educational systems. The management style also directly affects the country's educational philosophy. Countries have differences in respect to economic, social and educational boundaries. In addition, globalization affects countries' management styles. Thus, governments of different cultures and educational systems need to recognize their own education system to compete with the world. In this study, Malta, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Finland, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Turkey, of which the educational systems structuring, financing, training programs, the school principal to choose the format of formal education objectives, admission requirements and funding are compared. In this study, education and training related to different education system managers will be introduced, and it is intended to gain different perspectives. (Contains 4 footnotes, 6 tables, and 7 figures.) [This paper was presented at XIV WCCES "Bordering, Re-Bordering and New Possibilities in Education and Society" Istanbul June 14-18, 2010.]

The purpose of this paper was to analyse the core of the quality of life, intended as a complex construct with specific and transversal features. The approach to this issue, by linking it to the great emergency of disability in adulthood, pushes the analysis into deep conceptual pedagogical reflections, which lead the authors' initial reflections to focus on the theoretical framework related to the quality of life model and subsequently on the identification of some areas of intervention as a tangible application of the quality of life model. New perspectives and innovative potentials for the quality of life of adults with disability are investigated to reach new awareness, which can also be applied in different life contexts. The paper mentions meaningful trajectories, also from the international scene, aiming to guarantee significantly oriented life trajectories.

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of the funding mechanisms for higher education across sixteen countries which builds upon existing work on educational institutions, educational outcomes, and welfare regimes. We focus upon the current financing dilemma within the Irish higher education system, seeking potential solutions within an international comparison. Our quantitative analysis identifies four clusters of countries: the Nordic, Continental-Europe, Mediterranean and English-Speaking; all of which are strongly correlated to economic and structural characteristics based on welfare state literature. Each education regime is associated with institutional, economic, and political factors. Our analysis presents evidence that Ireland does not possess the characteristics of a country that could benefit from an income-contingent lending structure to fund university education due to inherent sovereign characteristics. Further, Ireland could be better served through the introduction of free fee structures such as that found in Norway and Scotland or through the generation of state-sponsored lending facilities through private institutions like those already in place in Finland, Germany, and Sweden.

In a recent paper, Reardon found that the relationship between family income and children's academic achievement grew substantially stronger in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. We provide an international context for these results by examining the income-achievement association in 19 other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries using data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment. First, we calculate and compare the magnitude of "income achievement gaps" across this sample of countries. Second, we investigate the association between the size of a country's income achievement gap, its income inequality, and a variety of other country characteristics. We find considerable variation across countries in income achievement gaps. Moreover, the U.S. income achievement gap is quite large in comparison to this sample of countries. Our multivariate analyses show that the income achievement gap is positively associated with educational differentiation, modestly negatively associated with curricular standardization, and positively associated with national levels of poverty and inequality.

In this paper, I examine whether generalized trust and education, as well as social security policies of welfare state institutions matter for cross-national differences in subjective well-being (SWB), because knowledge on this issue is still lacking. For this purpose I integrated the insights of two sociological theories: Social Function Production theory and Actor-Centred Institutionalism. Based on these theoretical notions we derived several hypotheses, which I tested using multilevel analysis of the data from the European Social Survey (2006), in a sample of 37,237 respondents from 22 European countries. My findings indicate that various extensiveness of social security policies matter for the level of SWB, and for the impact of education on SWB. I found negative impact of low education on SWB in all countries, except in Northern and Western European countries. This might suggest that social security policies of the latter countries have diminished the negative impact of low education on SWB. Moreover, my findings indicate positive relationship between individual education and generalized trust; as well as between generalized trust and SWB in countries with all five types of social security policies.

Cross-border higher education institutions are considered a main way to fulfill the educational internalization in Mainland China; to some extent they represent the attitude of entering the international market. In this paper, the history, status quo, and future of Chinese-foreign cooperatively-run schools are analyzed and discussed. Cross-border higher education institutions in Mainland China have experienced the process from accidental and disorder to a systematic and quality orientation.

This research paper addresses the issues of integration of technology enhanced learning (TEL) into an educational organization. Good practice experience cannot be directly transferred to new organisations due to different contextual conditions. The TEL integration depends significantly upon a very rapid development of services and information communication technologies (ICT). Some organizations have managed to go step by step with the developments and have become leaders in TEL provision, however others, though having successful examples, have not succeeded in reaching the service level they want. While many positive examples exist in research literature, it is rare that institutions have complete strategies or solutions for integrating TEL that meet their specific pre-conditions and satisfy quality assurance parameters at the same time. The research reported here aims at the development of a theoretical framework for quality assurance of TEL integration into educational organizations. During the research, the development of the TEL concept has been discussed, success indicators for TEL integration in an educational organization have been described, the quality parameters of TEL integration into an educational organization have been identified and the model for TEL integration into an organization has been developed.

This paper studies the link between school facilities (buildings and grounds) and student achievement in eight countries using data from the TIMSS 2003 database. The results indicate a negative relationship, but the estimated coefficients are mainly insignificant. Interestingly, the coefficients differ heavily across countries. Whereas there seem to be adverse consequences from poor facilities in Australia, The Netherlands and Japan, there is no significant effect in the remaining five countries. It remains an open question for future research why facilities seem to play such a different role across countries. The main lesson to be learnt from the present investigation is that school facilities seem to have different impact across countries.

The paper examines if there has been an increase in the attention paid to social and environmental issues (SEI) in accounting curricula. Using schools participating in the Aspen Institute's Beyond Grey Pinstripes (BGP) program, we measure the increase in the number of accounting courses incorporating SEI across the biennial application years of 2005, 2007 and 2009. We also examine the percentage of SEI coverage in accounting courses between 2007 and 2009. Our findings suggest that there was not an appreciable increase in the number of accounting courses dealing with SEI between 2005 and 2007, but that the increase was significant during the period from 2007 to 2009. Further, the increase over the four-year period from 2005 to 2009 was also significant. In addition, there is a significant increase in the percentage of SEI coverage in accounting courses between 2007 and 2009. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Employees in technical firms, like garages, need more and more formations. Due to the very fast innovation in technology, lifelong learning is a real need for these labour forces. On the other hand, there are the needed formations very specialized and expensive. Another problem employers faced in these economical sectors in Western Europe is the lack of candidates. Also in secondary education schools, the wide interest for these formations is decreasing. One of the factors causes this problem is that schools don't have enough money for investing in new and high-tech machines. Therefore two interreg projects were submitted and approved for financing. Interreg is an initiative of the European Union meant for the permanent development of the "European Space". The third phase of interreg means enhancing the economic and social cohesion within the European Union. In this paper, we describe two successful projects, namely Autoweb and V@K, which try to help employers, employees, schools and students to keep up with the high-tech innovations with a workplace-based e-learning program. (Contains 1 figure.)

In this paper, we report on the results of a series of e-mail interviews with statistics educators around the world, focusing on their views of the nature of teaching statistics as a "service" subject. What do they think are the important aspects of statistics to focus on in such servicing teaching? What do they think are the characteristics of good teachers? And how do they go about developing themselves as statistics teachers? We analyse their responses to these and other questions using a phenomenographic approach to identify an outcome space for their conceptions of teaching service statistics. We examine the centralities and tensions that emerged from their responses and discuss the implications--insights on agency and reflective practice. The study contributes to a research framework for understanding the nature of pedagogical awareness in contexts beyond the setting for this study and aims to stimulate discussion about teaching service courses.

Background: Educational qualifications and literacy skills are highly related. This is not surprising as it is one aim of educational systems to equip individuals with competencies necessary to take part in society. Because of this relationship educational qualifications are often used as a proxy for "human capital". However, from a theoretical perspective, there are many reasons why this relationship is not perfect, and to some degree this is due to third variables. Thus, we want to explore the net relationship between educational attainment (harmonized according to the International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED) and literacy skills, and how much skills vary within education levels across countries. Methods: We use data from 21 countries from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012. This paper compares the literacy skills of adults who achieved different levels of educational attainment across countries. Given the high degree of educational differentiation in most countries, we do this using a more differentiated educational attainment variable than what is commonly used. In our analyses we firstly adjust for factors that are likely to affect access to education and the acquisition of educational qualifications and literacy skills, such as parental education and language and migration background. In a second step, we also take into account factors affecting skill development after initial formal education, such as occupation and skill use at home. Results: We firstly find a high degree of heterogeneity of skills across countries for equivalent education categories. Secondly, we find skill similarities for equivalent education categories classified at different broad education levels, sometimes even breaking the hierarchical order of 'higher education entails higher competencies'. Conclusion: We conclude that ISCED levels cannot be taken as a cross-nationally comparable proxy for human capital in terms of literacy skills, and that education has to be harmonized in a substantively more meaningful way in future adult literacy surveys.

This paper describes a limited longitudinal study of young children's early numeracy development within three testing cycles, at the mid-point and towards the end of their reception year (at five years-of-age) and again at the mid-point of Year 1 (at six years-of-age), located within the broader context of progress through to Key Stage 1 SAT results (at seven years). Assessment was carried out using the Utrecht Early Mathematical Competence Test (Van Luit et al., 1994). This comprised eight sub-topics, five items in each, including comparison, classification, correspondence, seriation, counting, calculation and real-life number problem solving. Broadly, one set of sub-tests related to understanding of relations in shape, size, quantity and order, whilst a second set of sub-tests related to basic arithmetic. Three hundred pupils were selected from twenty-one schools, large and small, from rural and urban areas, with high and low concentrations of children eligible for free school meals and/or with special educational needs, as well as representing a broad range of achievements levels based on standards assessment tasks. Whilst this paper focuses upon the performance of English pupils, reference is also made to the larger European sample which involved children from Flemish-speaking Belgium, Germany, Greece, Slovenia and the Netherlands. Results showed that children's total scores at around the mid-point of reception year were indeed predictive of later achievement at the end of KS1 though the combined scores over three testing cycles which extended to the mid-point of Year 1, were more so. Discriminant analysis confirmed that a combination of a counting sub-test (one seemed sufficient) and a sub-test focusing on understanding of relations in shape, size, order or quantity (a different one at each testing cycle), together with the general number knowledge sub-test was best predictive of final SAT levels. Comparison with the international data set suggested a different trajectory for English pupils, with more of a bias towards arithmetic sub-tests than their European counterparts who start school later. Moreover, the pattern of dependence of scores on age in which no advantage was found in including any national differences was especially interesting. These findings are discussed within the context of different school start ages and traditions of preparation for formal schooling. Perhaps what emerged most strongly is the need for young English pupils to maintain a broad and balanced early mathematics curriculum, which places appropriate emphasis on practical problem solving. (Contains 8 figures, 15 tables and 1 note.)

This paper presents findings from a study carried out between May and October 2013. Based on a survey, which was developed by the MoGaBa VET project partners, the study aimed at understanding the factors that influence the way vocational instructors perceive and use game-based learning. A total of 267 trainers from eight European countries took part in the survey. Results indicated that even though educational games were regarded effective and useful with regard to motivational aspects or learning to use ICT; however, it also revealed that the integration and widespread use of mobile GBL solutions faced several challenges linked to technical, institutional and also organizational aspects.

To achieve efficient and effective quality improvement, European universities have gradually adopted organizational strategies, structures, technologies, management instruments, and values that are commonly found in the private business sector. Whereas some studies have shown that such managerialism is beneficial to the quality of job performances of university employees, others have argued that managerialism is largely counterproductive and that it results in lower performances. The latter situation is called a "managerialism contradiction". This paper tests two lines of reasoning underlying a potential contradiction governing the relationship between managerialism and job performances, while using university employee survey data from six European countries (Belgium, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, UK). The results tend to support the assumption that managerialism, in these six countries at least, has a positive effect, albeit a modest one, on the quality of performances. The most important conclusion is therefore that there is no managerialism contradiction at work in European universities.

For several reasons, people with profound and multiple disabilities may be offered a variety of therapeutic interventions. Thus far, researchers have shown a limited interest in providing an empirical base for these interventions. Research is needed on the theoretical rationale (if any), the supposed "modus operandi" and the claimed benefits of therapeutic interventions. As a first step, this paper offers an overview of the use of these interventions. A total of 48 settings in the Netherlands and Belgium were included in this study. Results show that some interventions are very frequently used, with Snoezelen, Sensory Integrative Therapy, Equine Therapy, Basic Stimulation and Aromatherapy being the most common. Only one of these five has been subjected to a number of carefully designed studies. Nearly a third of all therapeutic interventions currently in use are not clinically evaluated. Of those that are evaluated, more than half are only evaluated monthly or even less frequently. The article ends with a call for an effective research strategy to separate interventions that are beneficial to people with PIMD from those that are unsubstantiated. (Contains 3 tables.)

The evaluation of government-financed research has become increasingly important in the last few decades in terms of increasing the quality of, and payoff from, the research that is done, reducing the cost of doing it, and lending public credibility to the manner in which research is funded. But there are very large differences throughout the world in the extent to which systems used promote these results. This paper briefly presents the dimensional results of a study designed to comparatively evaluate the national-level research evaluation models in sixteen countries on five merit-defining dimensions. (Contains 6 figures.)

This paper reflects on the usefulness and applicability of comparative inquiry for policy and practice in education development projects involving universities within the EU or EEA (Socrates, Erasmus, etc.) and especially in technical aid and outreach programmes (Tempus etc.), using concrete examples, exploring the distinctions made in EU regulatory documents and funding frameworks between research and development. The tension is shown between overt political objectives such as the transfer of assumed know-how to solve immediate priority problems of common concern, and educational objectives of extending understanding among equal partners. It is suggested that the more a development project is a shared learning programme, the more applicable and fruitful are comparative methods. Experienced examples are considered of research investigation applied to development programmes from within, whether as practitioner research or by independent research commissioned by practitioners, to assist in pursuing development objectives; of surveys commissioned by the EC across programmes to evaluate the overall effectiveness of a scheme and identify best practice for the future; and of research undertaken independently, taking advantage of access to the project framework to explore questions which are not necessarily or exclusively instrumental. The need is identified to bring these into a coherent system, and recommendations are outlined for future policy.

This article presents seven reports on the interviews about reception and use of international indicators among respondents from Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom. The first report is based on interviews with 5 respondents occupied with different aspects of the macro level of the Flemish educational system. It focuses on the content of the interviews and is structured upon seven headlines referring to the BEQUAD interview schedule. The second report is based on six interviews with respondents placed at different levels of the Danish educational system. This report is written on the basis of the interviews and the structure of the report is built upon seven headlines referring to the guideline of interview headings including a summary and a conclusion. The third is based on six interviews conducted during the months of May and June, 2002, with a union representative with the SNES (secondary education teachers) (A), the Director of School Education (B), a Counsellor at the "Cour des Comptes" and Chairman of the Higher Council for School Assessment (C), a counsellor and Director of Programming and Development (D), a Senator (E) and a Deputy Director of Higher Education (F). Most of the interviewees expressed their views on the best-known publications by the OECD and French education system. All interviews give emphasis on the use of indicators to serve specific ends. The fourth is based on interviews with 6 people engaged in key positions in the Italian Educational system. The fifth is based on interviews with six people occupying different key positions in the Dutch educational system. The report summarises the content of the interviews and is based on the seven headings of the BEQUAD interview schedule. Next is a report based on interviews with 6 people occupying key positions in the Spanish educational scene. The interviews aimed at getting relevant information about their perceptions on the possible influences of international indicators to decision-making processes and public information. The last report is based on interviews with three groups of respondents in the UK. The report summarises the content of the interviews and the Department of Education and Skills (DFES) written response and is structured using the seven section headings of the BEQUAD interview schedule. (Contains 2 footnotes.)