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This paper presents results of a comparative international study on some aspects of school counseling in the following 12 countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Malta, North Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, UK, and USA. The authors explain the multifunctional character of school counseling, give an idea of establishing a research field that could be called 'comparative school counseling studies', show the original terms in individual countries, and compare six aspects of school counseling: 1) legislative framework; 2) position requirements; 3) role of school counselors; 4) functions of school counselors; 5) interaction; and 6) ratio. The paper concludes with a long list of qualities school counselors are expected to possess. This is a document study chiefly based on examining, systematizing and comparing national documents (laws, reports, instructions, advices, position requirements, ministerial orders, recommendations, strategies, and statistics) on school counseling.

This paper reports on an exploratory case study of learner participation within the context of online language learning in virtual world platforms. Data for this investigation was collected through a case study of a Business English course within a qualitative Case-Study Research framework. This study examines learner activity in virtual worlds in relation to three main features of the platform: avatars, artefacts and spaces. The study makes use of "Reflexivity" and "Exploratory Practice" as its core methodological approach to the building of the case. The virtual world data is analysed from a multimodal perspective and makes use of "visualization" as the primary analytical tool. In an attempt to broach the Eurocall 2015 conference topic of Critical Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), this paper will present and discuss three findings: a broadening of our understanding of learner participation in virtual worlds, the critical role played by course designers and teachers in the shaping of learner participation in virtual worlds, and the potential of virtual worlds as a tool for reflective practice and practitioner research. [For full proceedings, see ED564162.]

Government regulations require businesses to improve their processes and products/services in a green and sustainable manner. For being environmentally friendly, businesses should invest more on eco-innovation practices. Firms eco-innovate to promote eco-efficiency and sustainability. This paper evaluates the eco-innovation performance of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries with data envelopment analysis (DEA). Data were gathered from the world bank database and global innovation index report. Findings show that for most OECD countries, energy use and ecological sustainability are more important than other inputs and outputs for enhancing eco-innovation. [For full proceedings, see ED571459.]

This paper explores the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] achievement of twenty countries in light of some of their demographic differences. SES [student socioeconomic status], nuclear family, gender, home language, and native status were predictive of achievement for every country. Demographics accounted for as little as 8 percent to as much as 22 percent of individual score variance depending on the country and subject. Being male was almost a universal advantage in math, but was a far greater disadvantage in reading for every country. The relative performance of some countries changed when scores were adjusted for demographic differences; however, the Asian countries and Finland remained on top. Instructional strategies related to countries performing above expectations were explored.

This document contains the agenda and papers presented at the Agora IX meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece in June 2000 on alternative education and training processes. The papers are "Integration of Migrant Pupils in the Danish Education System" (Bang); "Support Services for Inclusive Education" (De Vroey); "Single Sex Schooling or Coeducation?" (Schrodt); "Serving the Needs of Gifted Individuals: The Optimal Match Model" (Monks); "The Common Culture Needed for the Democratic Transformation of Schools" (Rochex); "Danish Production Schools" (Ljung); "A Review of the Training Workshops and Craft Centres in Extremadura" (Lucas); "Combating Social and Economic Exclusion" (Brodigan); "The Irish Leaving Certificate Applied: Trojan Horse or Contrived Equilibrium?" (Gleeson); "Contribution of Mr. Manfred Schneider from the BBJ-Unternehmensgruppe" (Manfred Schneider); "Strategies to Combat Failure at School: A Comparison of Italian and European Experiences" (Montedoro); "Nightriders Tailoring Training to Young People's Lifestyles" (Lavelle); "Comprehensive Education or Removal of Pupils: The Dilemma Facing Education Systems in Responding to School Failure" (Casal); "The New Skills Approach The Roles of those Involved' (Rue); "The Relationship Between Centralised and Decentralised Learning in Vocational Training" (Vogel); "Company Role and Responsibility in Education and Training" (Suomalainen); and "The Role of Local Authorities in the Integration of Disadvantaged Young People in Germany" (Schlegel). The document contains a list of event participants. (SLR/CL)

In partnership with Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Center for Minority Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, Salzburg Global Seminar hosted an international strategic dialogue of 60 thought leaders, researchers, and practitioners from institutions serving marginalized populations to develop a platform for on-going dialogue, problem solving and solutions to common challenges. The program--"Students at the Margins and the Institutions that Serve Them: A Global Perspective"--was held October 11 to 16, 2014 at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria and builds on Salzburg Global's track record of programs delivering on educational equity, quality and innovation. Program participants represented 19 countries and all regions of the world and engaged in five interactive days of issue framing, dialogue and strategic synthesis of global research, policy and expertise, and together assembled various frameworks for action. Issues debated include: national contexts and taxonomies of practitioners, intersections of identities and their effect of access, displaced students, legal frameworks for broadening access, and funding frameworks for institutions serving students at the margins. Participants also heard student voices; both at undergraduate and graduate levels. This report describes the program session discussions and outcomes. Appended are: (1) Session Participant and Staff List; (2) Session Agenda; and (3) Interviews and Op-eds. [Additional support for this work was provided by Capital Group Companies, the Mexican Business Council, and The Nippon Foundation.]

Many European governments associate improving literacy with providing development assistance to regions like Africa and Asia from which the majority of the world's 774 million illiterates come. As school attendance is compulsory in the region, it is assumed that the Education for All (EFA) goals have been achieved and literacy is therefore not deemed a priority concern. It is in this context that the Institute and its partners, the Agence Nationale de Lutte Contre L'Illettrisme (ANLCI) and the UNESCO French National Commission, organized a Regional Meeting on "Literacy and the Promotion of Citizenship: The Challenge of Learning" from 2-5 April 2005 in Lyon, France. With the support of the European Union and the involvement of the European Association of Education of Adults (EAEA), it brought together 145 participants representing governments, research institutes and universities, non-government organizations, and public and private literacy providers. This publication brings together the main presentations from that meeting, and as such documents the diversity of literacy-related thinking and practice in the region. This publication begins with a foreword by Adama Ouane and contains the following papers: (1) Literacies for Active Citizenships (Evangelos Intzidis and Eleni Karantzola); (2) Literacy and Social Inclusion in Ireland and the European Union (Inez Bailey); (3) Young Adults, Gender and Literacy: A UK Perspective (Bethia McNeil); (4) Ensuring Quality in Literacy: Populations, Practices, Pedagogy and Professionalism (Ursula Howard); (5) Assessing Low Levels of Literacy: The Case of France (Jean-Pierre Jeantheau); (6) Basic skills education for the Turkish Roma population (Maria Simion); (7) Social Integration through Literacy: The Example of Romas in Bulgaria (Maria Todorova); (8) Literacy for Migrants: The Nordic Example (Qarin Franker); (9) Interventions for the Imprisoned Populations in Greece (Dimitrios Bekiaridis-Moschou); (10) Professional Development Training Staff in Austria (Antje Doberer-Bey); (11) Ensuring Learners' Participation: The Experience of Frontier College (John O'Leary); (12) Ensuring Learners' Participation Workshop Skills for Life in England (Andrew Nelson); (13) Workplace Basic Education in Ireland (Inez Bailey and Helen Ryan); (14) The Role of Municipalities in Literacy (Rosa M. Falgas i Casanovas); (15) From Adult Learners' Week to Local Education Plan (Lidwien Vos de Wael); (16) Literacy and Numeracy in Local Communities (Jan Eldred); (17) Libraries as an Open Space for Further Education (Barbora Horavova); (18) Illiterates Online! Learning reading and writing via internet? (Ralf Kellershohn); and (19) Literacy through ICTs (Helen Ryan). Individual papers contain tables, footnotes, notes, endnotes, appendices and references. [Additional funding for this paper was provided by French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Conseil general du Rhone, and Trace Element Institut pour l'UNESCO, and Ecole nationale superieure des sciences.]

This document contains the agenda and papers on work and training presented at the Agora VII meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece in October, 1999. The Foreword describes each session with a list of the topics and papers, along with a brief introduction to the topics. The three sessions are: Work and Training in Society in the 21st Century; Working Time and Training Time Inside and Outside the Enterprise Management of People and Skills; and Working Time and Training Time in the Course of Life. The papers are "To What Extent is Work Also Training?" (Johan van Rens); "Learning: Where, When, and How?" (Eric Fries Guggenheim); "The Place of Work and Education in Contemporary Society" (Juan Jose Castillo); "Crisis in the Traditions for Admission to Training"(Jorgen Mork); "The OECD's Thematic Review on Adult Learning. The Themes Under Review" (Patrick Werquin); "The Contexts of Training" (Saul Meghnagi); "Training in the Context of Reduced Working Hours" (Jacques Trautmann); "The Future of the Relationship Between Working Time and Learning Time" (Klaus Schedler); "Working Time, Education Time and Social Capital" (Tom Schuller); "Synthesis of the Work" (Andre Kirchberger). The document also contains a list of event participants and a bibliography. (SLR)

This volume contains 14 papers from international sources that outline fundamental concepts and research interests connected to the measurement of quality in postsecondary education. Some of the papers consist of concept papers and others are more extensive reports of research underway or findings from recently concluded studies. The papers are as follows: "Quality in Higher Education and the National Education Goals" (Sal Corrallo); "The Role of American Higher Education in Making America First in the World in Science and Mathematics by the Year 2000 (Goal #4)" (Michael Nettles); "Comparative Aspects of Quality Assurance in Higher Education" (Edgar Frackmann); "Questions of Quality in UK (United Kingdom) Higher Education" (John Brennan); "Conceptualization of College Quality" (Jeffery Gilmore); "Taxonomy and Comparison of Approaches to Quality Assurance in Higher Education" (David Woodhouse); "Using Student Persistence Research to Strengthen the Quality of Teaching and Institutional Processes" (Robert Froh); "An International Perspective on Assessing Baccalaureate Program Outcomes" (Trudy W. Banta, Homer S. Fisher); "Institutional Research and Planning to Support Decentralization and Privatization: Building Self-Correction and Accreditation Systems" (Robert Froh); "Developing the Tools for Using National and International Data Bases: The Relationship to Issues of Content, Assessment, and Attainment" (E. Stephen Hunt); "New Approaches to Evaluation in Austrian Higher Education" (Hans Pechar); "Assessing the Quality of Higher Education: A Mexican Perspective" (Felipe M. Rizo); "The Research-oriented Dynamism of Education" (Jose Strubbe); "Explaining Differences in Dropout between Faculties in Dutch University Education" (Riekele Bijleveld). Appendixes list participants and offer information on the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning and Assessment. (JB)

The third paper discusses the concept of mediatization on the level of political organizations. The concept is concretized as a reaction of political organizations to their perception of an increased importance of the media and of "best practice" models in communication. Mediatization implies changes in organizational structure (rules and resources for communication) and behavior (amount and form of communication). This definition of mediatization on an organizational level allows the development of indicators for empirical research and seems to be more appropriate than concepts of a simple adaptation of political actors to the needs of the mass media. The paper summarizes case studies on structural changes within traditional and large party organizations in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. The studies have focused on the national party central offices out of election campaigns, analyzed party documents and interviewed party representatives from October 2006 to January 2007. The main conclusion is that mediatization on the level of party organizations take place, but not to the expected extent when reviewing the academic literature. Processes of mediatization are slowed down by loosely-coupled forms of party organizations (especially internal federalism), which degree is dependent on the country specific context. Therefore, from the organizations point of view, mediatization leads to conflicts between the requirements of a "professional" media communication (for instance on speed) and internal factions (for instance on participation or at least consultation). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) is an international, non-profit educational organization. The Association's purpose is to advance the knowledge, theory, and quality of teaching and learning at all levels with information technology. "EdMedia + Innovate Learning: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology" took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 25-29, 2018. These proceedings contain 308 papers, including 14 award papers. The award papers cover topics such as Open Education Resources (OER) certification for higher education; a cooperative approach to the challenges of implementing e-assessments; developing an e-learning system for English conversation practice using speech recognition and artificial intelligence; the Learning Experience Technology Usability Design Framework; developing strategies for digital transformation in higher education; pre-service teachers' readiness to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education; teacher development through technology in a short-term study abroad program; Austria's higher education e-learning landscape; a digitised educational application focused on the water cycle in nature carried out in a secondary school in Ireland; evaluative research on virtual and augmented reality for children; how children use computational thinking skills when they solve a problem using the Ozobot; a strategy to connect curricula with the digital world; the learning portfolio in higher education; and adult playfulness in simulation-based healthcare education. [For the 2017 proceedings, see ED605571.]

Papers from the Hiroshima/Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Meeting of Experts on Higher Education and from the March l981 Seminar on Innovations in Higher Education in Comparative Perspective are presented. In January, representatives from Sweden, the United Kingdom, Austria, the United States, and Japan met to discuss and study common problems as part of a comparative study of innovations in higher education, and in March scholars on higher education from Europe, Korea, and the United States met. Papers and authors are as follows: "Innovations in Higher Education: Issues, Definitions, and Japanese Experiences" (Kazuyuki Kitamura); "Inter-Country Exchange and Co-operation on Innovative Approaches to Higher Education 'The Swedish Case'" (Lennart Levin);"Innovative Approaches to College Teaching in the United States" (K. Patricia Cross); "The Development of Non-University Higher Education in the United Kingdom" (Norman Lindop); "Supplement to Sir Norman Lindop's Contribution" (Edward L. Houghton); "Curriculum Reform as an Instrument for the Promotion of Innovations: Experiences and Intentions in Austria" (Sigurd Hollinger); "Curriculum Development at Tsukuba" (Fujio Ikado); "The Current State and Problems of Teaching Methods at Universities and Colleges in Japan" (Takashi Sakamoto); "Useware of OHP" (Kunihiro Suetake); "Factors of Achievement and Failure in European Higher Education" (Ladislav Cerych); "Innovative Teaching in Higher Education: An Asian Case" (Hong, Woong Sun); "The Ups and Downs of Innovations in U.S. Colleges and Universities" (Janet Ruyle); and "Linkages between Universities and Non-Universities" (Frederick K. Kintzer). (SW)

A symposium on schools as part of a network of learning facilities took place in Segovia, Spain, in December 1986. Participants from 14 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries met to share the implications of network cooperation for educational buildings and their management. The physical isolation of schools from each other and from the communities which they serve is increasingly being challenged. New links between education and industry, the growing importance of lifelong learning, and the potential of new information technology all serve to increase the interdependence of schools and other educational and social institutions. The report draws together the main strands of the wide-ranging discussion at the symposium and identifies the opportunities offered by networking. The report assesses the impact networking may have on educational building policy and practice and in particular the financial advantages of sharing high-cost facilities. The appendix contains the text of the background paper written for the symposium by John Mayfield, then deputy director-general for education, South Australia. This paper traces the development of networking and gives several examples of the practical questions associated with its implementation. Also appended is an annotated list of the 22 papers presented at the symposium. (MLF)