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Background: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is commonly defined as a transitional subclinical state between normal aging and dementia. A growing body of research indicates that health behaviors may play a protective role against cognitive decline and could potentially slow down the progression from MCI to dementia. The aim of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of literature focusing on health behaviors and MCI to summarize the factors and evidence regarding the influence of health behaviors on MCI. Methods: The study performed a bibliometric analysis by retrieving publications from the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index subdatabases within the Web of Science Core Collection. Utilizing VOSviewer and CiteSpace software, a total of 2,843 eligible articles underwent co-citation, cokeywords, and clustering analyses. This methodology aimed to investigate the current status, trends, major research questions, and potential future directions within the research domain. Results: The bibliometric analysis indicates that research on healthy behaviors in individuals with MCI originated in 2002 and experienced rapid growth in 2014, reflecting the increasing global interest in this area. The United States emerged as the primary contributor, accounting for more than one-third of the total scientific output with 982 articles. Journals that published the most articles on MCI-related health behaviors included "Journal of Alzheimer's Disease," "Neurobiology of Aging," "Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience," and other geriatricsrelated journals. High-impact papers identified by VOSviewer predominantly cover concepts related to MCI, such as diagnostic criteria, assessment, and multifactorial interventions. Co-occurrence keyword analysis highlights five research hotspots in health behavior associated with MCI: exercise, diet, risk factors and preventive measures for dementia, cognitive decline-related biomarkers, and clinical trials. Conclusion: This study provides a comprehensive review of literature on health behavior in individuals with MCI, emphasizing influential documents and journals. It outlines research trends and key focal points, offering valuable insights for researchers to comprehend significant contributions and steer future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

This article maps the scientific production and the contents associated with the sustainable development goals and their integration with universities during the past 21 years. Although many of the topics related to sustainable development goals (SDGs) have been addressed in different studies for decades, it is since 2015 onwards that they gained greater prominence due to the inclusion of higher education as an important actor in the fulfillment of the 2030 agenda and the United Nations SDGs. For the purpose of this paper, a bibliometric analysis of 871 papers, 535 documents in Scopus, and 336 in Web of Science (WoS) from 1998 to 2019 was performed, and the Bibliometrix analysis tool was used. The objective of this mapping is to answer the following research question: Is the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals and Universities a field of study? An analysis of the network of collaborators and trend topics in Scopus and WoS allows us to identify the concurrence and relationships of some keywords, such as sustainable development, sustainability and planning, and some background words, such as humans and global health. In another analysis, the word "higher education" is related to change. This article suggests that the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals in Universities is becoming a field of study under exploration, with a peak of production in 2016 and that has remained stable in the last three years, but thanks to the leading role assigned to Universities, intellectual production should increase in the following years.

Grounded in poststructuralist understandings of language and identity and Davies and Harré's (1990) positioning theory, this paper explores one South Korean student's educational experiences in her English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom, specifically related to subject positions and identity construction pertaining to language. Using a researcher diary, semi-structured interviews, and dialogue journals with one Korean university student, this paper reports findings from a qualitative study. The findings suggest a critical awareness of the effects of positioning on language learning experiences. The results indicate that although a student may exercise agency to take up or resist subject positions, this positioning is part of a greater discourse, generally outside the control of the student, that constructs identity through particular social experiences. The results of this study will be of interest to researchers in the areas of language identity, second language learning, and higher education in the 21st century.

Background: Rare diseases, also referred to as orphan diseases, are characterised by their low prevalence with majority of them are chronically debilitating and life threatening. Given the low prevalence and the widely dispersed but very small patient base for each disease, there may often be a disproportion in the availability of treatments and resources to manage patients, spur research and train experts. This is especially true in Southeast Asian countries that are currently in the process of implementing or revising their universal health coverage schemes. This paper aims to examine the status of rare disease management in Southeast Asian countries. It will serve as the basis for a more active discussion on how countries in the region can address an under-recognised rare disease burden and enhance national and regional capacities.Methods: The study consists of literature reviews and key stakeholders interviews in six focus countries, including the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand and five countries as best practice, comprising of France, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea. Rare disease management initiatives across each country were examined based on the World Health Organization's framework for action in strengthening health systems.Results: The results suggest rare disease management remains challenging across Southeast Asia, as many of the focus countries face fundamental issues from basic healthcare systems to funding. Nonetheless, there are substantial improvement opportunities, including leveraging best practices from around the world and organising a multi-stakeholder and regional approach and strategy.Conclusions: Southeast Asian countries have made significant progress in the management of rare disease, but there remain key areas for substantial development opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Maternal death generates a great impact on public health, and it is recognized that its main cause is postpartum hemorrhage (PPH). Therefore, the objective was to analyze the bibliometric profile of the world scientific production on maternal mortality due to PPH. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Bibliometric study that included original articles indexed in Scopus, identified by means of a search strategy that included MESH terms and logical operators. Bibliometric indicators were estimated with the SciVal tool, and the VOSwiever program was used for co-occurrence networks by key terms and co-authorship by country. RESULTS: There has been an increase in the number of publications in the past 5 years. Regarding co-occurrence, the most frequent terms were "postpartum hemorrhage" and "maternal mortality." The United States and the United Kingdom are positioned as those with the highest density of publications; in addition, Australia evidences collaboration with Canada and South Korea. Publications with national collaboration were more frequent (36%). BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth is the most productive journal, although BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology has a higher normalized impact. The authors with the highest scientific output belong to an institution in the Netherlands. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Leiden University are the most productive. CONCLUSION: Scientific activity on maternal mortality due to PPH is increasing and its main means of dissemination are high-impact journals. National collaboration was more frequent, with the active participation of authors and institutions from the Netherlands and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine the examination of the researches about the use of technology by fine arts teachers. The study was conducted according to the content and citation analysis model. In this context, Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection indexes were included. In the document scanning in the WOS environment, the keywords 'Fine arts', 'Teachers' and 'Technology' were searched. In total, 169 documents were examined and analysed one by one. They were analysed according to year, document type, WOS content category, country, source title, organisation and citation, authors, publication language and categories. As a result of this research, the first study was conducted in 2004, while the most studies were conducted in 2016. It was concluded that the published studies had the most Proceedings papers as the document type. The area where the studies of fine arts teachers on the use of technology are mostly carried out is Education Educational Research, according to the Web of Science content category. The most researched title in the distribution according to the Source Title field is 'International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conferences on Social Sciences and Arts.' The university with the most studies is Kazan Federal University. The 19 authors who conducted the studies have a large number of studies in this field. It was concluded that other authors had only one study in the field. Again, when we look at the distribution of the countries and documents according to the language of writing, the country with the most studies is China and the language of the documents is English. The area continues to evolve.

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "'Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures--EduArc,'" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or (O)ER) framed within the digital transformation of ten different Higher Education (HE) systems (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey and the United States). Following a comparative case study approach, we investigated issues related to the existence of policies, quality assurance mechanisms and measures for the promotion of change in supporting infrastructure development for (O)ER at the national level in HE in the different countries. The results of this mainly documentary research highlight differences and similarities, which are largely due to variations in these countries' political structure organisation. The discussion and conclusion point at the importance of understanding each country's context and culture, in order to understand the differences between them, as well as the challenges they face.

The performance of air-type PVT and BIPVT collectors has been extensively studied. As a system that generates heat and power, PVT collector testing has some particularities especially when using air as a heat recovery fluid and a building-integrated design (BIPVT). The electrical and thermal experimental performance of such collectors are currently being evaluated using in-house methods or PV and/or solar thermal collector standards. The use of a wide range of methods, testing conditions and experimental setups makes it difficult not only to compare the performance of different designs, but also to have confidence in the results obtained. This study evaluates the performance of an air-type BIPVT collector with in-channel perforated baffle plates for heat transfer enhancement designed for a building-integrated façade. As part of a joint research project between Korea and Canada, the proposed collector's performance was evaluated through indoor (Canada) and outdoor experiments (Korea). Limited comparison of the results obtained with the two testing methods could be performed due to differences in environmental testing conditions, BIPVT collector area and experimental setup. Nevertheless, the limited measurement points under comparable testing conditions indicate that the results from the indoor and outdoor experiments have a similar trend. A comparison between the studied collector having a full PV absorber and a BIPVT collector with a hybrid PV/solar thermal collector absorber using a similar indoor experimental setup and testing conditions was performed. It showed that under still air conditions, for an irradiance level of approximately 820 W/m2 and with a low flow rate, the BIPVT collector with a hybrid PV/solar thermal absorber has a thermal and electrical efficiency of 25.1% and 5.9%, respectively. Under similar conditions, the BIPVT collector with a full PV absorber has a thermal efficiency of 23.9% and an electrical efficiency of 13.5%. At higher flowrates, both units have similar thermal efficiencies, however, the BIPVT collector with a PV absorber remains with an electrical efficiency that is more than double that of the unit with a hybrid PV/solar thermal absorber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many higher education institutions are expanding their academic cross-border mobility programs with the twin imperatives of nurturing students' global awareness and equipping them for future careers. To serve both university and student interests, "study abroad" student exchange programs, which are an official reciprocal academic mobility arrangement initiated and managed by two higher education institutions, have become "a normal option." This study focuses on the experiences of short-term, "study abroad" exchange students enrolled in programs offered through reciprocal partnerships between Canadian and Korean universities, as part of a larger investigation of international student exchange policies and in response to rising student mobility between the two countries. Narrative inquiry was used in conducting this research, and nine students were interviewed. To analyze the data, authors mainly drew on Riessman's (2008) scalar stages of thematic analysis, focusing on "'what' is said" (53) and trying to interpret it within the broad socio-cultural contexts (Grbich 2013; Gubrium and Holstein 2009). In contrast to their idealized or imagined exchange program, and in spite of their previous participation in international travel, the nine exchange students in the study viewed their foreign exchange as distressingly unfamiliar. This paper describes two inter-related aspects of their experiences: academic expectations and interactions with professors. When there are wide gaps in terms of cultural habits, personalities, and pedagogical values among professors, international students, and local students, collisions occur more frequently and it takes quite some time to find compromises between different views and to narrow the discrepancies. This implies that faculty should try harder to create a more inclusive milieu to understand and embrace different mindsets, cultures, and ideologies of exchange students. This study suggests that professors should be more sensitive to each student's cultural background and create culturally "fair" climate trying to understand exchange students' demanding conditions. In addition, given exchange students' difficulties relating to local students, professors should pay particular attention to providing opportunities for these students to interact with local students and incorporate strategies to facilitate exchange students' participation in class. To enhance student cultural awareness during their academic exchange, institutional actors should be active in informing exchange students about different cultural perceptions, ethics, and academic traditions. This type of awareness could be fostered from the offices that arrange academic exchange agreements between partnering institutions.

The adoption of open, online, flexible and technology-enhanced modes of learning (in short: of OOFAT) differs by higher education institution, despite the general cries of revolution and disruption due to digitalisation. This paper presents a new conceptual model for framing difference in three key educational processes (content, delivery and recognition) related to the potential of digitalisation to make these processes more flexible and more open. It is based on the results of a global survey of 69 higher education providers. The findings reveal six distinct archetypes of technology-enhanced higher education which vary according to the extent to which digitalisation is harnessed for content, delivery and recognition, and suggest different institutional strategies of digital adoption. It is hoped that this contribution will support comparative analysis of digitalisation strategies and peer learning between institutions.

This paper explores faculty's perspectives and use of open educational resources (OER) and their repositories across different countries by conducting a multiple case study to find similarities and differences between academics' awareness, perceptions and use of OER, as well as examining related aspects of institutional policy and quality that may influence individual views. Data were collected through nine expert reports on each country studied (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey) and were analyzed through qualitative content analysis using thematic coding. Findings show the impact on individual OER adoption with regard to the individual control of diverse factors by faculty members; of institutional policies and quality measures on the externally determined factors (by the institution); and of institutional professional development and provision of incentives in more internally determined factors (by the faculty members themselves). These findings carry implications for higher education institutions around the world in their attempt to boost OER adoption by faculty members.

Background: COVID-19 has a direct impact on the employment of older people. This adds to the challenge of ageism. The World Health Organization has started a worldwide campaign to combat ageism and has called for more research and evidence-based strategies that have the potential to be scaled up. This study specifically aims to identify solutions to combat the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the global ageing workforce. Methods: We present 15 case studies from different countries and report on what those countries are doing or not doing to address the impact of COVID-19 on ageing workers. Results: We provide examples of how COVID-19 influences older people's ability to work and stay healthy, and offer case studies of what governments, organizations or individuals can do to help ensure older people can obtain, maintain and, potentially, expand their current work. Case studies come from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand, United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Across the countries, the impact of COVID-19 on older workers is shown as widening inequalities. A particular challenge has arisen because of a large proportion of older people, often with limited education and working in the informal sector within rural areas, e.g. in Nigeria, Thailand and China. Remedies to the particular disadvantage experienced by older workers in the context of COVID are presented. These range from funding support to encouraging business continuity, innovative product and service developments, community action, new business models and localized, national and international actions. The case studies can be seen as frequently fitting within strategies that have been proven to work in reducing ageism within the workplace. They include policy and laws that have increased benefits to workers during lockdowns (most countries); educational activities such as coaching seniorpreneurship (e,g, Australia); intergenerational contact interventions such as younger Thai people who moved back to rural areas and sharing their digital knowledge with older people and where older people reciprocate by teaching the younger people farming knowledge. Conclusion: Global sharing of this knowledge among international, national and local governments and organizations, businesses, policy makers and health and human resources experts will further understanding of the issues that are faced by older workers. This will facilitate the replication or scalability of solutions as called for in the WHO call to combat ageism in 2021. We suggest that policy makers, business owners, researchers and international organisations build on the case studies by investing in evidence-based strategies to create inclusive workplaces. Such action will thus help to challenge ageism, reduce inequity, improve business continuity and add to the quality of life of older workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. As the second most common gynecologic cancer worldwide, cervical cancer has led to morbidity and mortality in thousands of women. Our study is aimed at comparing the long-term trends of mortality rates for cervical cancer in three highincome countries--Canada, Korea, and Italy--and analyzing the detached effects of chronological age, time period, and birth cohort by age-period-cohort (APC) analysis. Methods. Joinpoint regression was used in this study, and the age-period-cohort model combined with the intrinsic estimator method was also applied to estimate the detached effect of each age, time period, and birth cohort on cervical cancer mortality. Results. For the overall trends of ASMRs for cervical cancer, the rates for Canada and Italy generally decreased during the whole observation periods while the rate for Korea exhibited a significant increase from 1986 to 2003. The APC analysis suggested that the cancer mortality risks consistently increased with age in the age groups including women aged 20 to 50 years in all areas. The period effect exhibited a general upward trend for both Korea and Italy, while a decreased trend was observed for Canada during the whole observation period. The mortality risk generally decreased with birth cohort, except there was a slight increase for younger generations in the three countries. Conclusions. Our study shows that the overall decrease in the cohort effect may have contributed to the reduced mortality rate for Italy and Canada, and the increased period effects and cohort effect in younger generations may have led to the increase in cancer mortality rate for Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) has historically sought to influence environmental policies of other countries through multilateral environmental agreements. Under its 7th Environmental Action Plan and Trade for All strategy it now seeks to extend its environmental policy projection through trade; its recent free trade agreements now contain chapters addressing environment and sustainable development. However, by adopting high environmental standards the EU can also advance its own economic interests suggesting an ambiguous motivation. The recent Korean, Japanese and Canadian FTAs and the Mercosur agreements are examined in order to place the extent of this environmental turn within the context of economic advantage. The finding is that while environmental protection provisions in these FTAs may have environmental benefits, they may also serve EU domestic economic interests. This motivation has implications for new FTA negotiations, such as those with New Zealand and Australia, and now the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and non-HDL cholesterol have opposite associations with coronary heart disease, multi-country reports of lipid trends only use total cholesterol (TC). Our aim was to compare trends in total, HDL and non-HDL cholesterol and the total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio in Asian and Western countries.Methods: We pooled 458 population-based studies with 82.1 million participants in 23 Asian and Western countries. We estimated changes in mean total, HDL and non-HDL cholesterol and mean total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio by country, sex and age group.Results: Since ∼1980, mean TC increased in Asian countries. In Japan and South Korea, the TC rise was due to rising HDL cholesterol, which increased by up to 0.17 mmol/L per decade in Japanese women; in China, it was due to rising non-HDL cholesterol. TC declined in Western countries, except in Polish men. The decline was largest in Finland and Norway, at ∼0.4 mmol/L per decade. The decline in TC in most Western countries was the net effect of an increase in HDL cholesterol and a decline in non-HDL cholesterol, with the HDL cholesterol increase largest in New Zealand and Switzerland. Mean total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio declined in Japan, South Korea and most Western countries, by as much as ∼0.7 per decade in Swiss men (equivalent to ∼26% decline in coronary heart disease risk per decade). The ratio increased in China.Conclusions: HDL cholesterol has risen and the total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio has declined in many Western countries, Japan and South Korea, with only a weak correlation with changes in TC or non-HDL cholesterol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the Austrian health care system using the ecology of care model. Our secondary aim was to compare data from Austria with those available from other countries. Design: 3508 interviews employing a 30-item questionnaire related to the utilization of the health care system including demographic factors were conducted. Participants were chosen by a Random Digital Dialing procedure. Further, a literature review of studies of other countries use of the ecology of care model was conducted. Main outcome measures: Austria has one of the highest utilization of health care services in any of the assessed categories. The comparison with the literature review shows that Austria has the highest utilization of specialists working in the outpatient sector as well as the highest hospitalization rates. Taiwan and Korea have comparable utilization patterns. Canada, Sweden, and Norway are countries with lower utilization patterns, and the U.S. and Japan are intermediate. Conclusion: In Austria and similarly organized countries, high utilization of all health care services can be observed, in particular, the utilization of specialists and hospitalizations. The over-utilization of all levels of health care in Austria may be due to the lack of a clear demarcation line between the primary and secondary levels of care, and the presence of universal health coverage, which also allows for unrestricted and undirected access to all levels of care. Previous studies have shown that comparable countries lack the health benefits of a strong primary care system with its coordination function. In Austria and similarly organized countries, there appears to be high utilization of health care in general, as well as with particular utilization of specialists and hospitalizations. The high utilization of all levels of care in Austria may be the result of competition, lack of a clear demarcation line between the primary and secondary level of care, and the presence of universal health coverage. Pathways between primary and secondary care should be strengthened as previous studies have shown that comparable countries lack the health benefits of strong primary care and its function for health care coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

International surveys of student achievement are becoming increasingly popular with governments around the world, as they try to measure the performance of their country's education system. The main reason for this trend is the shared opinion that countries will need to be able to compete in the "knowledge economy" to assure the economic well-being of their citizens. This paper argues that secondary analyses of international comparative studies can help the development of the theoretical framework of educational effectiveness research. Toward this end, we present the results of a secondary analysis of PISA-2009 study which investigates the validity of the Dynamic model of Educational Effectiveness Research especially with regards the school level factors. Across country multilevel analysis of reading achievement revealed the importance of contextual factors and student level factors included in the dynamic model, especially student motivation, opportunity to learn, and school climate factors. Additionally, a comparative analysis with six countries seems to suggest that the model holds for individual countries as well especially at the student level. Based on these results, we draw implications for the design of comparative studies aiming to contribute to the development of evidence-based reform policies in education.

This paper aims to study the comparative comparison of implementing school-based management in developed countries in the historical context: from theory to practice. School-based management is not by itself and objective but a valuable tool in order to reach sagacity, capabilities and the enthusiasm from most people having shares in school. Emphasizing the empowerment and the promotion of the skill levels and the abilities concerned with the member's active in the school specially the managers, the teachers, and the student's parents along with the boards motivate their endeavor toward cooperative issues. The findings show the developed countries such as England, Mexico, Australia, The U.S. etc. Making their school management decentralized and autonomous along with submitting full authority to their local councils and their parent-teacher associations have improved their school management qualities and have been able to bring all main agents in the schools into participant in decision making affairs. Of the other strategies concerning the increase in cooperative decision making and turning schools more autonomous, used by leading countries, is to self-centralize (school-based management) and also manage schools in the form as board of trustees in such countries for the managers, the board and the others involved have greater authority to manage school affairs among which countries such as England, Canada, Spain, Iran, etc. can be noted.

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.

Lay conceptions of happiness are beliefs about the nature, value, antecedents, and outcomes of happiness. Happiness research has largely focused on the levels, predictors, and outcomes of happiness, whereas conceptions of happiness have received less attention. This study sought to expand our understanding of these conceptions by examining a relatively large number of them (i.e., eudaimonism, inclusive happiness, externality of happiness, fear of happiness, transformative suffering, fragility of happiness, valuing happiness, and inflexibility of happiness), in samples from Korea and Canada. Five components of well-being (i.e., social well-being, psychological well-being, life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect), the Big Five personality traits, materialism, and demographic variables were measured in addition to conceptions of happiness. The results showed that conceptions of happiness predicted various components of well-being over and above personality traits and demographic variables. These conceptions contributed additional variance to the prediction of materialism. The conceptions were largely independent of personality traits, and there were gender and age differences in the conceptions of happiness. The results also suggest that two dimensions of "effortful virtuosity vs. doubtful pursuit" and "malleability vs. stability" are the underlying dimensions along which the conceptions of happiness vary. There were similarities and differences in the results for Korea and Canada. In sum, this study provides a relatively comprehensive and systematic exploration of the conceptions of happiness, their structure, nomological network, and their relevance to well-being research. It is hoped that these results will stimulate more research on lay conceptions of happiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on the experienced educator perspective regarding human-to-human connection in distance education. The research questions aimed to fill gaps in the existing research literature, to investigate the role of the educator, to discover how learning and subject content are affected by contextual factors, to find out if it enhances the sense of togetherness (immediacy and intimacy). The Informed Grounded Theory and the Community of Inquiry model provided a scaffolding framework for designing interview questions and analyzing findings. The outcome of the analysis formulated a new theory called tele-proximity, which gives an explanation of how presences could work in synchronicity. The findings may help educators gain insight into how to use Synchronous Video Communication (SVC) and lead future research to dig deeper into the field of synchronicity and the importance of audiovisual cues.

The Changing Academic Profession (CAP) international survey was designed in part to consider the effects of globalization on the work context and activities of academics in 19 countries or regions around the world. This paper draws from a subset of these data to explore the extent to which academics are globally connected in their research and teaching, and the ways this connectedness relates to global migration. Across multiple measures, immigrant academics (i.e., academics working in countries where they were not born and did not receive their first degree) were more globally connected than national academics (i.e., those working in the countries of their birth and first degree). Global migration by academic staff is clearly a major contributor to the internationalization of higher education institutions, yet there was no evidence these contributions led to enhanced career progress or job satisfaction for immigrant academics relative to national academics. The international expertise and experience of immigrant academics may not be sufficiently recognized and valued by their institutions.

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.

Higher Education is experiencing an increasingly diverse student population. Students bring a range of skills and experiences to their courses; they have different backgrounds and different needs. This fluidity requires an approach to teaching that encompasses the social aspects of learning. It has been suggested that authentic approaches to teaching and learning can assist in offering a perspective on learning which views learning as "enabling participation in knowing". We propose that the authentic learning practices developed in The Gift design project, discussed in this paper, constituted approaches which acknowledged that students' interests and experience are intrinsically bound up with motivation and engagement and, as such, have a major influence on the ways in which learning is constituted and developed. The Gift project has developed a range of innovative formative strategies which have provided both students and tutors with opportunities to become involved in peer assessment and review, peer feedback and reflection on learning outcomes. This re-conceptualisation of the assessment process has provided valuable insights into the development of learning skills such as problem solving, critical analysis, and the development of creativity and learner autonomy.

With growing international interest in diversifying sites for pedagogical work within the doctorate, doctoral programmes of different kinds are being developed in different disciplinary, institutional and national settings. However, little is known about how the pedagogical work of these programmes is designed and enacted, and with what effects. In this paper, we present two cases of doctoral pedagogical work being undertaken within different disciplinary and institutional settings to describe how learning opportunities were designed and to theorise what it means to be engaged in doing doctoral pedagogy. Starting from the position that working from a design model supports systematic and rigorous documentation and development of pedagogy, we employ the twin concepts of design and action, drawing broadly on rhetorical and ethnomethodological understandings of pedagogy as social action. Of particular interest within the concept of design itself is the concept of enactment, the translation of designs into the practices of doctoral work. Together, the two cases become a resource for "slowing down" and making visible the practices of doctoral pedagogy that often go unrecognised because they appear so ordinary and everyday. This call for examining close-up existing doctoral education practices and relationships is attending to the "next challenge for doctoral education" (Green, 2009).

This article presents the authors' critique of lessons proposed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21). The authors initiate a discussion about content that they hope will play out in schoolhouses and statehouses across the country. They take on a different task: they present a handful of lesson ideas from P21 that could enhance studies of academic content. They present examples of content-rich education in which they hope P21 will use as models to revise its current skills maps. (Contains 11 endnotes.)

Background: Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) revealed that countries systematically differ in their respondents' literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments skills; skill levels also vary by gender, age, level of education or migration background. Similarly, systematic differences have been documented with respect to adults' participation in education, which can be considered as a means to develop and maintain skills. From a psychological perspective, motivation to learn is considered a key factor associated with both skill development and participation in (further) education. In order to account for motivation when analyzing PIAAC data, four items from the PIAAC background questionnaire were recently compiled into a motivation-to-learn scale. This scale has been found to be invariant (i.e., showing full weak and partial strong measurement invariance) across 21 countries. Methods: This paper presents further analyses using multiple-group graded response models to scrutinize the validity of the motivation-to-learn scale for group comparisons. Results: Results indicate at least partial strong measurement invariance across gender, age groups, level of education, and migration background in most countries under study (all CFI > 0.95, all RMSEA < 0.08). Thus, the scale is suitable for comparing both means and associations across these groups. Conclusions:Results are discussed in light of country characteristics, challenges of measurement invariance testing, and potential future research using PIAAC data.

Background: The Project Yi Jin (PYJ), an alternative pathway for secondary school leavers and adults to further their education, has been receiving full support from the government, the Federation for Continuing Education in Tertiary Institutions (FCE) in Hong Kong and the public. Graduates of PYJ have the equivalent academic status of their counterparts in the main stream education. It was first implemented in 2000/01 by the FCE and has been offered to more than 35,000 students by 2006/07. With the success of the programme as a safety-net for a mass education system, it should continue to function more vigorously as new reforms are being implemented in the Hong Kong education scene in the future. The Chief Executive in his 2004 Policy Address has set out the direction to develop a new secondary and university system, i.e., (3+3) for secondary + 4 (tertiary) [the old one is (3+2+2)+3], to be launched in 2010/11, that will effectively prepare the next generation to cope with the challenges of the 21st century and the demands of the rapidly developing knowledge-based society. The new system, together with substantial modified curricula including the newly developed applied learning courses (ApL), is supposed to be able to look after all secondary students. Aims and focus of discussion: This paper aims to argue the necessity of launching a new version of Project Yi Jin (nPYJ) concurrently together with the new 3+3+4 academic system. In light of the contemporary global educational systems as compared to that of Hong Kong, it is postulated that the launching of nPYJ as a continuation of the successful PYJ is both legitimate and indispensable with regard to the carefully observed current global fashion of lifelong learning and continuing education in which diversity, equity, and flexibility are highly valued. Method: A comprehensive comparative review was carried out on eleven selected oriental and occidental countries and regions, namely, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea, United Kingdom, United States, China, Taiwan, Singapore and Macao, focusing on the worldwide trend of constant high school drop-out rate as well as the mentioned countries' respective senior secondary schooling articulation policy leading to higher education, in particular shedding light on the establishment of alternative pathways towards tertiary education alongside the conventional educational track. Conclusion: With the literature backdrop and empirical support, it is shown that high school drop-outs are inevitable no matter how well-defined an education system may be. Thus this is where the "safety-net" contingency plan is found essential. A new version of Project Yi Jin (nPYJ), to be offered in parallel with the Hong Kong's new 3+3+4 secondary academic curricula, is indispensable to the new educational structure in the territory which fundamentally helps transform the conventionally somewhat segregated and elite educational system into a mass one. Regarding the curricular design, both PYJ and nPYJ will focus on generic skills and a wide range of electives will be offered as well to arouse students' interest of study. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 5 footnotes.)

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.

South Korean immigration to Canada has increased since the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. Korean immigrants in Winnipeg chose the city for many reasons: the introduction of the Provincial Nominee Program, structural changes in the home country, and individual family strategies to provide better educational opportunities for their children. This article examines how changes in the current wave of globalization, at both global and local scale, have affected the migration of Koreans to Winnipeg, Canada and how individual households chose their immigration destination. This study contributes to understanding of the less popular immigrant destinations of Canada using a multiscalar analysis that includes household level. In addition to economic purposes and children's education, changes of life style can be an important reason for immigrant location choice. Overall, the neoliberal economy in South Korea has pushed many Koreans to move to other countries, and the globalization of the Canadian economy has pulled nomadic middle-class members from other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]