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Sub-Saharan African societies had contacts with China that stretch back to the early days of the Silk Road where the two regions facilitated trade relations and exchanged technology and ideas. Beginning in the 1950s China formalized relations with SSA based on South-South cooperation. At the end of the Cold War, China intensified its relations with SSA within the frameworks of "One Belt one Road" in Africa and the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The China-Africa relations have scored benefits in the areas of promoting infrastructural development, strong investments in SSA, trade links between the two regions, less expensive technical assistance for nations in SSA, cultural exchanges, and student scholarships. Nonetheless, the relations raise complicated issues around trade where China is flooding markets in SSA with inferior goods, acquisition of resources, Chinese mining companies causing environmental destruction in many countries in SSA, and the Chinese government's debt trapping of many sub-Saharan African nations. Many suspect that China is surreptitiously forging a relationship with SSA that may help it assert its "trusteeship" over sub-Saharan Africa's political, economic, and development processes. The paper is developed within these broader contexts to examine the paradoxes and contradictions of the China-sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) relations and their potential impacts on education policy and practice in the region. The paper focuses on SSA, a region that constitutes forty-eight of the fifty-four countries of the African continent. This sociohistorical paper is part of my ongoing study to examine the impacts of external forces' economic and political relations on education policy and practice in the SSA and the potential of the relations to destabilize the epistemological processes of sub-Saharan African societies. [For the complete Volume 22 proceedings, see ED656158.]

Ten informal papers given at Discussion Forums to U.S. groups are provided which address current South African related issues as they touch upon the South African Information Exchange (SAIE) initiative. Papers have the following titles and authors: "Is There Space for American Involvement in South African Education?" (Merlyn C. Mehl); "Mapping the Future of Black South Africans in Science and Engineering Education" (Gordon Sibiya); "Education for Liberation/Transformation: The Role of Vocational Guidance and Counselling for Young Blacks" (Tahir Salie); "Education for Black South Africans: The Importance of Bursaries and Support Services for Black High School Students" (Pamela Tsolekile and Getti Mercorio); "The Community College Option: A Private Sector/Community Initiative to Break the Educational Logjam" (Stan Kahn); "UDUSA: Microcosm of a Society in Transition (Ratnamala Singh); "The Academic Boycott and Linkages Between U.S. Institutions and Eligible South African Academics" (Farouk Ameer); "Technical Education in South Africa and the Political Implications" (Brian De L. Figaji); "The Struggle to Realise the Freedom Charter in South Africa Today" (Raymond R. Suttner); "Coercion, Persuasion, and Liberation" (Vincent T. Maphai). Short biographical notes are included of each author. (GLR)

These three keynote speeches from a European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) seminar "Research on Vocational Education and Training in Europe" focus on the links between education, training, work, and economic growth. "Education and Training Policies in the Transition towards a Global Information Society: Needs and Opportunities" (Eve Caroli) analyzes the links between new technologies, skill requirements, and economic growth. It promotes transferable skills as necessary in the transition to the information and knowledge based society and recommends integrating education and training policy on one hand and labor market and employment policy on the other. "The Relationships between Education, Training, Employment, and the Labor Market: Some Research Findings and Conclusions" (Manfred Tessaring) illustrates the positive contribution of education and training to earnings and economic growth as confirmed by a number of studies. It also discusses the opportunities and problems of identifying and quantifying new employment fields, occupations, and qualification requirements. "OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] Activities Related to Research on Vocational Education and Training" (Abrar Hasan) addresses three issues: where the Vocational and Technical Education Project (VOTEC) work fits into OECD's broader mandate in the area of education and training work; a review of OECD's work in the VOTEC area completed in recent years; policy issues that have emerged from this work and the research gaps they identify; and an outline of the work the OECD is now planning in this area. (YLB)

The youth-led revolutions that rocked the Arab world earlier this year have refocused attention on the region's 100 million-strong youth demographic and its critical role in the transformation of existing political, economic, and social structures in the Middle East and North Africa. Youth under the age of 25 represent an estimated and unprecedented 60 percent of the region's population, and in many of the region's countries, approximately 30 percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 29. They have heightened expectations for themselves and their societies, but are constrained by the economic and political realities in which they live. The current demands of Arab youth for change are rooted in deep frustrations with the existing status quo--not least of which is the failure of the social contract for advancement that should be offered by higher education. Despite more than a decade of dramatic expansion--in enrollment, female participation, numbers of institutions, and programs--higher education in the Arab world continues to fall far short of the needs of students, employers, and society at large. In most countries, the majority of students are enrolled in institutions that lack key human and physical resources for success and suffer from overcrowding and poor quality. Efforts to address these chronic problems have had only marginal success. High unemployment among university graduates is only one measure of the reality of an educational system that is not producing graduates with the skills needed to succeed in the modern global economy and economies that are not producing opportunities for massive numbers of new entrants. Higher education has a critical role to play in the national and regional restructuring of Arab economic and political institutions that is currently underway. The long term success or failure of today's reform initiatives will rest, to a large degree, on the ability of these societies to place higher education where it belongs--as the engine of social and economic progress. The new pressures for political change may provide a unique opportunity to break free from some of the obstacles that have held back meaningful educational changes in the past. This working group, convened at the 2011 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Washington, DC, brought together educators, specialists, and public sector officials from the United States and the Middle East to review the current state of higher education in the Arab world and consider the key challenges facing this critical sector of society. How are different actors in the diverse landscape of Arab higher education advancing or impeding the goals of improving educational outcomes? To what degree do regional partnerships and cooperative efforts offer opportunities to overcome local obstacles in specific areas? Finally, where has important progress been made and what policy responses and initiatives should be encouraged to improve the ability of Arab educational institutions to meet the challenges of this transformational period? (Contains 11 footnotes.) [The 2011 U.S.-Islamic World Forum was convened by Safwan Masri and Katherine Wilkens. This report was produced by the Saban Center at Brookings

The "International Society for the Social Studies (ISSS) Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. The following papers are included in the 2015 proceedings: (1) Local History and Local Culture at the Core of Elementary Social Studies Curriculum (C. Agcaoili and S. Oshihara); (2) An Analysis of Enrolment in Advanced Placement Classes in Florida from the 2010 to 2011 School Years (B. Bittman); (3) Looking Beyond the Textbook: Multimodal Intertextuality in a Secondary Social Studies Classroom (T. Brown and S. Nance); (4) School/Family Communication and Involvement: A Top Ten List for Elementary School Teachers (S. H. Bowden and C. Corlis); (5) Bi-epistemic Research in a Policy Context: Current Findings and Subsequent Studies (L. Cherubini); (6) Replacing the Birth Language for Internationally Adopted Children: Linguistic and Cognitive Effects (A. P. Davies); (7) Strategies for Managing Culturally Diverse Virtual Teams: Creating a Feeling of Globalness (M. Flammia); (8) Neoliberalism and Privatization of Urban Health Care Facilities in Bangladesh (K. S. Haq); (9) Engaging Students through the Dynamic Learning Approach (M. M. Hussein); (10) Role of Cultural Diplomacy in Strengthening Diplomatic Relations: A Case Study on U.S.-Bangladesh Relations (M. T. Islam and M. N. Nur); (11) Just Eat It: An Examination of the Sociological Factors that Influence the Eating Habits of College Students (A. Minnick); (12) Why We Should be Skeptical of Bandura's Bobo Dolls (A. Pulido); (13) Opportunity Costs of Planning with Mandated Assessments: A Case Study of Fourth Grade Social Studies (R. Reed); (14) RCAIntervention: An Intervention System for Traditional, Blended, and Online Courses (J. Reynolds and C. Cummings); (15) Millennials at the Ballot Box: Where Have All the Young Voters Gone? (M. L. Rogers); (16) Impacts of Socio-Economic Background on Participation in Various Sport Types (H. I. Sengör); (17) Using Film to teach Character Education and Social Justice Education in Social Studies (C. Van Zandt); (18) Creating lessons with the C3 Framework and Digital Literacy (C. Van Zandt and L. Smith); and (19) Examining Students' Patterns Based on Their Historical Knowledge and Ability by Cluster Analysis (D. Yongjun). (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2014 proceedings, see ED565293.]

Two papers are presented which were originally prepared for delivery at a conference to evaluate the results of 20 years of scholarly exchange between the United States, the USSR, and Eastern Europe. Participants included over 300 members of the public affairs community, including government officials, public policy makers, business leaders, journalists, and educators. Both papers deal with the daily life of Eastern European Citizens. In the first paper, "In a Pig's Eye: Daily Life and Political Economy in Southeastern Europe," by John W. Cole, emphasis is placed on the necessity of viewing Southeastern European culture in terms of its own past experience and in comparison with other agrarian areas rather than in comparison with Western Europe or the United States. Southeastern Europe is characterized as an agrarian society undergoing industrialization and urbanization. In most cases, the most intensive social and economic ties are between parents and their offspring, although there are also important links among village households. In the second paper, "Studying the Soviet Social System: The 'Soviet Citizen' Revisited," author Gail Warshofsky Lapidus focuses on the importance of and changes which have occurred since publication of the original "Soviet Citizen" (by Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer, Harvard University Press) in 1959. The author concludes that scholars will be able to produce new research as insightful as the "Soviet Citizen" if they are allowed to undertake social science research in outlying regions of the USSR, make an effort to conceptualize societal differences between the United States and the USSR through some other prism than the 'industrial society' model, and if they disseminate research findings in academic and governmental communities. (DB)

Three papers on nuclear weapons and nuclear war, based on talks given by distinguished physicists during an American Physical Society-sponsored symposium, are provided in this booklet. They include "Caught Between Asymptotes" (Philip Morrison), "We are not Inferior to the Soviets" (Hans A. Bethe), and "MAD vs. NUTS" (Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky). Areas addressed in the first paper (whose title is based on a metaphor offered by John von Neumann) include the threat of nuclear war, World War III versus World War II, and others. The major point of the second paper is that United States strategic nuclear forces are not inferior to those of the Soviets. Areas addressed include accuracy/vulnerability, new weapons, madness of nuclear war, SALT I and II, proposed nuclear weapons freeze, and possible U.S. initiatives. The final paper considers the public consciousness of nuclear war, mutually assured destruction (MAD), nuclear utilization target selection (NUTS)- a conceptual approach to nuclear war which pretends that specialized applications of nuclear weapons are possible, and others. In addition, selected discussion questions from the symposium are provided. Since courses on science and society are proliferating in many colleges/universities, it is suggested that this booklet may serve as reading material for such courses. (JN)

The twelve papers in this volume were presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Physical Education in 1980. The topics addressed were: (1) the position of the American Academy of Physical Education on its roles and responsibilities to those involved in physical education; (2) social influences on the ancient and modern Olympic Games; (3) future directions of athletic amateurism and the Olympic movement; (4) joint biomechanical filming project by the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1979-1980; (5) the growth of sport sociology; (6) values inherent in participating in sports; (7) play and sport as moral education; (8) research and use of sport psychology for the Olympics; (9) research findings on maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max) and their application to sports performance; (10) implications of the Olympic games for physical education curricula; (11) the importance of competition and the breaking of athletic records; and (12) the spirit of the Olympics versus boycott. This last paper was the R. Tait McKenzie Memorial Lecture. An appendix provides lists of the members and fellows of the academy as of May, 1980 and of its presidents from 1926 to 1981. (FG)