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The paper looks at part-time higher educational services for students in the educational systems of Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A comparative examination of the nature and importance of part-time higher education is then presented. (DB)

By recognising the limitations of formal sex education, young people are able to seek out alternative material, gaining informal sexual knowledge through their own means and through a wide variety of sources. This paper derives from part of a larger study centred on feminism and heterosexuality in practice which features 17 feminist-identified women (age 21-59) who engage in sex with men. Offering a multi-generational perspective, in which participants experienced sex education and gained informal sexual knowledge from the 1970s to 2000s, it identifies important synergies regarding the continued insufficiencies of formal sex education as well as the role that sex-positive feminism has played in gaining informal sexual knowledge throughout the last 40 years. Motivated by overwhelming themes of protection and prevention, the informal sexual knowledge these women gravitated towards approached understandings of sex and sexuality from a critically informed, sex-positive, feminist framework, that includes the potential and possibility of female pleasure and desire. In many cases, seeking informal sexual knowledge emerged alongside young women's early associations with feminist values and identities. Findings point to the important role of feminism and sex-positive texts in young women's reflections on gaining informal sexual knowledge.

This article discusses the persistence of a gender gap among university-based academics, despite the development of equity policies and "family-friendly" initiatives. Over four decades of research are reviewed from the liberal states of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA and the UK, including my own qualitative interviews in Canada in 1973 and in New Zealand in 2008. The paper summarizes some of the structural, relational and interpretive factors contributing to the perpetuation of the gender gap. I argue that academic work has been influenced by similar global trends visible in other workplaces and that academics share the prevalent patterns of gender relations contributing to the gender gap. Despite over four decades of social change, including policy initiatives to improve the status of academic women, this article shows that the gender gap continues in these countries for similar reasons.

Several movements have emerged related to the general idea of promoting "openness" in science. Research councils are key institutions in bringing about changes proposed by these movements, as sponsors and facilitators of research. In this paper we identify the approaches used in Canada, the US and the UK to advance open science, as a step towards understanding how policy in this area is evolving. The findings highlight three broad patterns across the countries, showing that open science is supported not only be the activities of individual research councils, but also through government mandates and inter-council cooperation. These patterns involve efforts to create a digital infrastructure for open science, to foster open access, and to support open data initiatives.

This paper empirically examines the impact of academic research on high-tech manufacturing growth of 28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and emerging countries over the 1991-2005 period. A standard research and development (R&D) expenditure based measure is found to be too general to capture the input in high-tech research. To overcome this problem, a novel proxy for high-tech research investment--the supercomputer capacity--is proposed. Empirical evidence strongly supports this choice of variable. It is also found that academic R&D exerts a larger growth effect on high-tech output than its industry and government counterparts, but only the impact differential between academic and government R&D is statistically significant.

Traditional, top-down professional development (PD) can render teachers mere implementers of the ideas of others, but there is some hope that the participatory nature of social media such as Twitter might support more grassroots PD. To better understand Twitter's role in education, we conducted a survey of K-16 educators regarding their use of the microblogging service for professional purposes. Respondents described multifaceted and intense use, with PD activities more common than use with students and families. This paper delves into qualitative data from 494 respondents who described their perspectives on Twitter PD. Educators praised the platform as efficient, accessible and interactive. Twitter was credited with providing opportunities to access novel ideas and stay abreast of education advances and trends, particularly regarding educational technology. Numerous respondents compared Twitter favorably with other PD available to them. Members of our sample also appreciated how Twitter connected them to educators beyond their own schools and districts, with mention of exposure to both like-minded and diverse perspectives. Respondents described positive and collaborative professional activity facilitated by Twitter, and many noted how it helped them combat various forms of isolation. We conclude by discussing implications of the survey results for educators, researchers and policy-makers.

Graduate employability has become an issue since there are broad mismatches between the acquired graduate skills from university and the required skills by employers. While previous researches have outlined the salient skills that need to be embedded in graduate education, to date no studies have attempted to methodically identify and synthesize the literature on graduate attributes. In this paper a total of 39 relevant studies on graduate skills and attributes in the subject areas of business and management, accounting, and computer science were extracted from Scopus® (database). This revealed a total of 53 graduate attributes, with some being highly used, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, technological skills, creativity, interpersonal skills, leadership skills, self-management and flexibility/adaptability. The majority of studies used a quantitative survey method to collect and rank graduate attributes, and Australia emerged as the most active country in researching the domain.

Research suggests that the development of a teacher educator identity is a central process in becoming a teacher educator. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the concept of teacher identity. However, teacher educator identity seems to be still under-researched. In this article, a review of literature on teacher educator identity is provided. Fifty-two research papers were analysed to identify challenges and tensions teacher educators experience during their induction, factors which influence the development of their professional identity, and the features that induction programmes should have. The findings suggested that new teacher educators generally develop negative self-views about their abilities and professional identities. Self-support and community support activities were found to facilitate teacher educators' transition and enhance their identity development. Key features of academic induction were identified as acting as a learning community, cultivating supportive and professional relationships, encouraging self-enquiry and research and involving teacher educators in reflective activities.

Teachers in academia are usually not required to have teacher training but must often be evaluated by their students who expect them to have much better teaching qualifications than their high school teachers. However, teachers in elementary and high schools are required to go through several years of teacher training, resulting in a teaching certificate, which is usually mandatory in the secondary school system. This anomaly causes great tension in colleges and universities and often results in pressure to "improve" teaching evaluation in regard to academic level. In many countries, a doctorate degree in any field automatically allows its holder to teach in academic institutions because the students are expected to learn on their own while the professor is the expert responsible for helping with complicated questions. These discrepancies often hamper the advances of higher education. This paper presents the situation of teaching in higher education in selected countries, while presenting various paradigms for improving the state of teaching in higher education. The aim is to study the methodologies used to assess the quality of teaching in higher education systems, in general, and in Israel, specifically.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to identify the offering and nature (scope) of sustainability accounting courses at universities that have signed the Talloires Declaration and also at universities with prominent sustainability accounting researchers' affiliations. For this purpose a university web sites content analysis for sustainability accounting courses was conducted. This study can be replicated in order to evaluate web sites disclosures by universities across disciplines in relation to sustainability education. It can also be replicated to assess the theoretical versus implemented scope of sustainability education, and to determine the impact of prominent researchers in the area of sustainability education. Design/methodology/approach: Talloires Declaration signatories' universities' web sites were searched for information regarding sustainability accounting subjects. A search was also conducted for the Curriculum Vitae and profile of prominent sustainability accounting researchers to collect data on involvement in sustainability accounting education by these researchers. The findings regarding the offering of a sustainability accounting course and its nature and scope (if found on the web sites) are presented in this article. Findings: It is found that less than 30 per cent of the Talloires Declaration universities' web sites in Canada, USA, United Kingdom and Australia have information on sustainability accounting education in various forms including stand alone subjects (all electives) and sustainability accounting embedded in other accounting and non accounting courses, with limited scope. This percentage was found to be substantially lower or non-existent at universities from other countries. The probability of sustainability accounting education being offered at the post-graduate level (specifically as a PhD programme) is much higher at universities that have a prominent research profile in the area. It is also found that sustainability accounting education is not offered in majority of the cases, at the undergraduate level at universities where prominent sustainability accounting researchers are based. The focus is on post-graduate and research education rather than on undergraduate and course work education. Research limitations/implications: A limitation of this study was the limited information available in English on universities' web sites from countries where English is not the primary language. Other technical limitations such as the absence of a search function on the university's web site were also found as a hindrance to data collection. Originality/value: This paper addresses the existence and scope of sustainability accounting education, the gap between universities' expected comprehensive (including all disciplines) commitment to sustainability and the actual implementation of this commitment. It also addresses the absence of sustainability education involvement by prominent sustainability researchers and academics at the under graduate level. (Contains 1 table.)

In 2009, a think tank called the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes (IALEI) announced the results of a study entitled Climate Change and Sustainable Development: The Response from Education. Intended for a policy audience, the study offered a glimpse into the status of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and an early look at the emergence of Climate Change Education (CCE), in 10 different nations. As with most international reports, the IALEI report provoked many questions, some of which are more broadly relevant to scholarship and practice. This paper introduces a review symposium that addresses three such questions: (1) How coherent is the concept of ESD across national contexts and what conceptual tensions continue to surround ESD and CCE? (2) Can nation-level analyses tell us anything useful about countries where education is not centrally governed? and (3) In light of the evolving relationship between educational research and policy, how should researchers engage with ongoing policy debates? (Contains 4 notes.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) in universities. Initially directed toward profit-oriented businesses, the BSC has since been adopted by many non-profit organisations with seemingly diverse objectives. A number of primarily publicly-funded universities and institutions, which are part of these universities, also embarked upon this strategic management approach. They soon discovered that the classical BSC approach and, for that matter, a modified approach suited for non-profit organisations had to be further modified to suit their unique circumstances. As universities struggle to adapt the BSC approach to fit their needs, questions have been raised whether BSC is an appropriate strategic management tool for universities. Design/methodology/approach: Through a critical review of the discourse surrounding this issue and BSC of 30 universities around the globe, this article examines the use of BSC in universities. Findings: It was found that concerns regarding suitability of this approach for universities are not only serious but most universities, by nature or circumstances, are ill positioned to mobilise substantial resources, lay the necessary groundwork and develop systems in order to benefit from this initiative. It was found that universities, which did adopt BSC, have diverse expectations, understanding and implementation strategies. Lack of understanding, an unclear success rate, slower new adoptions and subsequent abandonment of this approach by some of the universities suggest that the BSC approach may have failed to meet expectations. Originality/value: To date little has been written on the use and suitability of the balanced scorecard in universities. (Contains 4 tables and 2 notes.)

In the course of educational expansion, student populations have become more diverse. This paper represents an international literature review on the topic of first-generation students (FGS), i.e. students whose parents have not obtained a higher education qualification. On the basis of more than 70 research articles and reports on FGS from several countries, we find that the focal points in FGS research concern their pre-college characteristics, mobility factors, decisions about institution, degree and subjects, FGS' experiences at university, and academic outcomes. Summarising the state of research on these topics, we point to two problems: (1) the international incommensurability of data on FGS due to differences in how FGS are defined and researched; (2) the depiction of FGS' problems as individual rather than structural problems. We recommend that structural changes such as making organisational structures in higher education institutions more transparent are in order instead of offering special support programmes only for FGS.

This research paper reports the findings from an international survey of fieldwork practitioners on their use of technology to enhance fieldwork teaching and learning. It was found that there was high information technology usage before and after time in the field, but some were also using portable devices such as smartphones and global positioning system whilst out in the field. The main pedagogic reasons cited for the use of technology were the need for efficient data processing and to develop students' technological skills. The influencing factors and barriers to the use of technology as well as the importance of emerging technologies are discussed.

In this paper I highlight the significance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's contribution to the study of teacher learning. I particularly draw on his notion of "embodiment" to show that professional knowledge is embodied knowledge and that teachers make sense of their professional world through their embodied action. I contrast my interpretation with a professional learning model that has been influential in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and other countries. I suggest that policy makers interested in education reform initiatives would benefit from interrogating the nature of professional practices in education.

A growing number of U.S. institutions are recognizing the importance of reaching out to and involving alumni in meaningful ways--so much so that it's encoded as a specific campaign goal. But, like fundraising goals, alumni engagement goals are not realized easily, overnight, or just because they're committed to paper. Lasting engagement takes careful planning and hard work. And since engagement can mean different things at different institutions, it's critical that institutions are clear about why they are setting an alumni engagement goal, what they will measure, and how they will capture the information. According to Marie Earl, an alumni strategy consultant at the University of British Columbia (UBC), focusing on engagement is a great way to add value to the institution, demonstrate relevance, and get some really great results for alumni all at the same time.

Transparency and comparability of higher education institutions especially in terms of their academic programmes and research activities are important issues for today's working environment. This paper is an overview of a recently completed PhD thesis which outlines examples of selected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (Austria, Germany, Finland, the UK, the USA and Canada) with their different approaches to implementing a quality assurance system. These case studies are compared through peer-reviewed country reports and interviews with national and international experts. Based on this comparative study, useful recommendations are provided to create a functioning quality assurance system within an international higher education area. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

In recent times, many key host nations have made it easier for foreign graduates to migrate after graduation. These students are often considered ideal migrants, possessing local qualifications along with a degree of acculturation, language skills and, in many cases, relevant local work experience. For the student, the opportunity to obtain international work experience adds to the appeal of the overseas study experience and enhances the graduate skills necessary to compete in the global labour market. This paper examines recent changes to migration policy in Australia affecting the post-study work entitlements of international students studying at Australian universities and explores the underlying rationale and consequences of the recent changes in policy direction. An examination of migration policies in the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada indicates that recent changes to skilled migration policy in Australia, along with bleak economic conditions in a number of key host countries, has opened up opportunities for Australia to re-position itself favourably.

Family literacy programs in North America and the United Kingdom have enjoyed widespread public and political support. Thousands of initiatives following a variety of models currently operate under the spectrum of family literacy programs. In this paper, the influence of learning theories, the research on children's early literacy development, and the sociopolitical context with gave rise to the intervention movement, will be reviewed with respect to their impact on current models of family literacy programs. The research on program evaluation is also considered, and is related to current practice and future directions in family literacy programming.

Background: Schools experience a wide range of crime and disorder, victimizing students and staff, and undermining attempts to create a safe and orderly environment for student learning. Police have long established programs with schools, but there has been no systematic review of evaluations of these programs, outside of police-led prevention classroom curriculum programs such as D.A.R.E. Purpose: This paper documents a systematic search to identify experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations that assess the effectiveness of non-educational policing strategies and programs in schools. Setting: Included studies took place in or around K-12 schools in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Intervention: Studies were included if they reported on a specific school-based strategy that heavily involved police and did not exclusively involve the police teaching a curriculum or program such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.). Research Design: Systematic review of experimental or quasi-experimental evaluations. Data Collection and Analysis: Only those impact studies that used experimental or quasi-experimental design, had at least one outcome measure of school crime or disorder, and were available through December 2009 were eligible. Electronic searches and other methods were used to identify published and unpublished evaluation reports. Findings: The searches identified a total of eleven quasi-experimental studies. Ten of the eleven studies would likely have received a "3" on the Maryland Scientific Methods Rating Scale, a common approach to classifying studies on the basis of internal validity. If evidence rating criteria from the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) were applied, only one study would likely receive a grade of "Level 2" evidence (acceptable with reservations) and the other ten studies would likely not meet WWC evidence screening criteria. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

This paper is a macro study on higher education R&D and its impact on productivity growth. I measure the social rate of return on higher education R&D in 17 high-income OECD countries using country level data on the percentage of gross expenditure on R&D performed by higher education, business, and government sectors over the period 1981-2006. Empirical results suggest that lagged R&D performed by higher education is positively affecting productivity growth in all specifications. The long-run propensity of productivity growth to R&D performed by the higher education sector is also found to be positive and significant while it is found be insignificant to business R&D. (Contains 13 notes, 3 figures and 8 tables.)

Pseudoscience is a ubiquitous aspect of popular culture which constitutes a direct challenge to science, and by association, to science education. With the exception of politically influential pseudosciences trying to impose themselves on official curricula such as creationism, science education authorities and professional organisations seem generally reticent about coming to grips with pseudoscience. This apathy is reflected by the low level of engagement in a comparative study undertaken by the author of this paper. The issue is contextualised with reference to the curricular priorities and classroom realities of school science education which leave little room for the extraneous subtleties pseudosciences present.

In this paper, we employ cultural sociology and Braj Kachru's model of World Englishes as theoretical and analytical tools for considering English as a form of capital necessary for widely disseminating research findings from local networks of practice to the greater science education research community. We present a brief analysis of recent authorship in top-tier science journals to demonstrate the salience of English language dominance as an issue in our field and we share narrative reflections from 11 international science education researchers offering perspectives from the field about the challenges faced by researchers in local and global contexts. Using an interpretive research stance, we discuss these narrative reflections to illuminate the role of personal and collective responsibility of individuals, organizations and institutions within local social networks of practice to recognize the relationship between capital, power, and equitable participation within a global science education research community. We conclude by discussing some existing structures within local networks of practice that relegate some members of the community to peripheral participatory roles in the global community and we suggest new structures to support individuals to more equitably contribute to the production of knowledge in the field of science education in ways that benefit not only individuals, but also the global science education community. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

There is a growing body of literature discussing evidence-based education, practice, policy, and decision-making from a critical perspective. In this article, drawing on the literature and policy documents related to evidence-based education in the USA, Britain, and Canada, I join this critique and offer an anticolonial perspective. I argue that proponents of evidence-based education unknowingly promote a colonial discourse and material relations of power that continue from the American-European colonial era. I posit that this colonial discourse is evident in at least three ways: (1) the discourse of civilizing the profession of education, (2) the promotion of colonial hierarchies of knowledge and monocultures of the mind, and (3) the interconnection between neoliberal educational policies and global exploitation of colonized labor. I conclude with the decolonizing implications of revealing some of the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform. (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper engages with a selection of scholarly writing in English that was published in the last decade and written from particular liberal democratic contexts (predominantly the UK, the USA, and Canada). The literature diagnoses the need for a more complex theory of citizenship education and theorises schooling for citizenship in a global orientation. The analysis calls for more explicit attention to the assumptions about the citizen subject student, the "who" of global citizenship education (GCE). Overall, the findings suggest the assumed subject of GCE pedagogy is the autonomous and European citizen of the liberal nation-state who is seen as normative in a mainstream identification as citizen and who must work to encourage a liberal democratic notion of justice on a global scale by "expanding" or "extending" or "adding" their sense of responsibility and obligation to others linearly through the local to national to global community. Thus, this theoretical work contributes a more complex notion of the citizen-subject to accommodate more diversity and to begin to recognise unequal power relations. Ultimately, however, the conceptualisation of global citizen education assumes a particular normative national citizen, and this assumption must be probed and made more explicit. (Contains 13 notes.)

This self-reflexive essay teases out the predicaments that I have encountered through my past publishing experience, while situating them in a critical review of the existing English-language studies of Japanese education. Drawing on postcolonial theoretical insights and recent critical sociology of academic knowledge production, I use my personal experience as a starting point to identify the particular discursive structure of comparative education that constrains the articulation of "other" education in the field. My critical review of comparative studies of Japanese education demonstrates that many of them, including my own, unreflexively accept the subject positions offered by this discursive condition and thus further constrain space for those who write in English about "other" education and Japanese education in particular. In conclusion, I discuss recent studies of Japanese education that partially address the dilemmas raised in this paper and the wider implications of this study for the field of comparative education. (Contains 12 notes.)

As the focus on international education has changed from international aid to international trade, competition for internationally mobile students has increased. The motivational factors influencing the education destination decision for students from China is of particular significance to destination countries and their educational institutions. This paper explores directly with Chinese students the determinants and motivations on the education destination decision. The primary data is collected from five geographical regions in China. The analysis of the research findings has resulted in some important implications on government policies and institution recruitment strategies. (Contains 5 figures and 18 tables.)

At least one-third of the 72 million children currently missing out on primary education are estimated to be disabled. With just five years remaining to achieve the Millennium Development and Education for All (EFA) goals, global efforts to ensure all children complete a full cycle of primary education by 2015 will fail if bilateral and multilateral donor support for education does not prioritise the inclusion of disabled children. This paper reviews the commitments and practices of key EFA Fast Track Initiative (FTI) donors in relation to early childhood and primary education for disabled children between 2005 and 2008/9. The review highlights that, while a number of FTI donor partners are beginning to pay greater attention to the inclusion of disabled children in education through their international development cooperation and policy commitments, this has not been accompanied by sustained and systematic action. Weak political will and continued marginalisation of the issue of education for disabled children from the mainstream EFA agenda threatens to impede current efforts towards "education for all". (Contains 9 notes and 1 table.)

The cultural components of drawing allow one to consider it a symbolic form of cultural communication. The behavioural and cognitive mechanisms involved in the cultural transmission of symbolic communications are situated in an environment embedded in cultural-historical features that should be taken into account, as they give rise to variations in socio-cultural practices. The aim of the present paper is to provide evidence of a range of different pathways through which the acquisition of drawing emerges in divergent cultural contexts. This work stems from the international "Day in the Life" ("DITL") project. From the "DITL" dataset countries, we show how family members in seven (in Thailand, Peru, Italy, Canada, the UK, the USA, and Turkey) expose their 30-month-old child to opportunities for experiencing drawing. We focus on the way the children are given the opportunity to draw, their spontaneous uptake, and on the different modalities through which they discover relationships between drawings and the objects they represent. In the different interactions observed, we confirm the omnipresence of situations that child development research has identified as promising for drawing-skill development. In all contexts, drawing materials, shared child-adult attention, dyadic asymmetrical relationships, and reciprocal involvements are found to be present. (Contains 9 figures.)

The past 20 years or so have seen ongoing concern for the nature of science education in the Anglophone developed world. A particular focus of this concern has been the need to find new ways to frame science curricula that will engage students, yet it is proving difficult to achieve this goal. In this article I argue that the impact on science curriculum of a societal shift to neo-liberalism and an attendant policy shift to outcomes-based education should be explicitly acknowledged; further, that the forms of curriculum that emerge from neo-liberalism are unlikely to provide the engaging and inclusive science education needed today. To illustrate the impact of the neo-liberal societal shift on science curriculum I compare an exemplary, inclusive and innovative science curriculum document from the 1980s with its outcomes-based successor from the 1990s. I show that in this case the shift to the outcomes-based form significantly restricted the possibilities for framing science education to respond to the local community, restricting a vision of science as a social institution; further, it framed each learner as an individual to the exclusion of community while reducing options for framing learning to meet individual needs. I argue that it is important for the future disciplinary well-being of science, and for the well-being of society on the whole, that both science and its scientists be seen as socially located. Science curriculum documents must initiate and support this perspective.