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With discourse analyses, this paper attempts to review the research development of relationship education in Taiwan for nearly a decade after the "Gender Equity Education Act" was announced in 2004, including the research topics generated, the knowledge accumulated, and the results achieved. This paper focuses not only on how the power and impacts of the academic institutions evolves through the production process of knowledge from the research, but also on how the gender perspectives are placed or filled into the discourses. Tracking and reflecting on the discourses and the development of relationship education researches in Taiwan, this paper aims to examine the interwoven effects and influences that social cultures, structures, and institutional power play on the knowledge production and research development of relationship education. The trajectory of Taiwanese experience illustrates a good example for policy making and legislative initiatives in legislative procedures in regard to certain gender knowledge and subjects. It is essential to utilize and coordinate the national resources and academic institutions with further awareness for the direction and promotion of gender knowledge in order for the education and research to root, grow, and prosper.

Indonesia always continually failed international assessments even though many efforts have been made. The results of PISA 2012 put Indonesian students in the worst position. In contrast, East Asian countries' performance well in mathematics, reading, and science. Indeed, Singapore has the best performance in the Southeast Asia region even in the world as well as Shanghai-China. The position of Indonesia is lower than Viet Nam, Thailand, and Malaysia in South-East Asia. Therefore, by carrying out a literature review, this paper analyzes what is happening in Indonesia beyond assessment, especially in science. Assessment reform from the above East Asian countries was also depicted to complete the discussion. Thus, this paper not only analyzed the lack of science content in Indonesia compared to other countries, but also described some lessons that can be drawn in relation to the content tested in the PISA science test from East-Asian countries.

The trend towards neo-liberal policies which began in the 1980s has caused public finances around the world to be linked to market forces rather than state allocation. In consequence, the sharp reduction in public funding allotted to the education sector has affected both social values and educational quality. With the growing influence of globalization on higher education, many East Asian nations have enacted urgent university reforms designed to boost competitiveness of their domestic university systems. China's Projects 211 and 985; South Korea's BK21; Japan's National University Corporation Plan; and Taiwan's 'Five Year-Fifty Billion Plan have all been initiated in response to the process of globalization and the demand for global talent in academia. Elsewhere, governments in the Arab Middle East, the Americas, Europe, East and Southeast Asia have all initiated new policies to enhance the global competitiveness and international visibility of their flagship universities, and many of these focus in an unprecedented away on journal publication as the major performance criterion for faculty reward. The increasing extent to which government policies worldwide favour measurements derived from publication indexes such as SCI/SSCI has led to strengthened managerial governance over academic culture and the academic profession itself. This paper argues that a phenomenon of 'publish globally and perish locally' has emerged, especially in the humanities and social sciences which are most vulnerable to 'SSCI Syndrome', and that this trend is detrimental to academic effectiveness and diversity.

In this paper I reflect on the experience of working with Taiwanese art educators. The data I revisit comes from participation in four art education conferences between 1995 and 2001, a three-month period of residence at Changhua University of Education teaching a master's programme, three intensive summer programmes organised for Taiwanese art teachers in London and doctoral supervision. In these reflections I consider what these experiences have taught me about multicultural art education and pedagogy in Taiwan, their key characteristic and some East-West differences. I conclude that multicultural art education reform in Taiwan is distinctive in the way it engages both with homeland studies and global visual culture. The absence of national sovereignty means that Taiwanese art teachers are ideally placed to experiment with post-modern developments in art curriculum practice. (Contains 13 notes.)

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) has emerged as a core curricular goal since at least the 1960s. While science education reforms around the world have shed light on various epistemic and social underpinnings of science, how science curriculum documents portray the nature of other related disciplines such as mathematics and engineering has drawn little attention. Such lack of attention is surprising, given the growing interest among educators in the integrated approach to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and the frequent emphasis on STEM in recent curriculum policy. The study reported in this paper aimed to understand how recent science education reform documents from the USA, Korea and Taiwan compare with regard to their representation of the nature of STEM disciplines. Using the framework of the family resemblance approach (FRA), we present a comparative analysis of three recent science education standards documents to examine their coverage of the epistemic underpinnings of STEM disciplines, particularly with regard to the disciplinary aims, values and practices. The results indicate that the features specific to science and shared by science and engineering were most frequently addressed in the standards documents, whereas mathematics-related features were rarely mentioned. Furthermore, there was variation in the coverage in terms of the nature of STEM disciplines. Based on the findings, we discuss the contributions of the FRA framework in analysing STEM curricula in an interdisciplinary manner and make suggestions for integrating the nature of STEM disciplines in science curriculum documents.

This paper focuses on the influences and changes of recent Taiwan teacher preparation program evaluation (TTPPE) as one of the national evaluation projects conducted by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan. The main concerns are what kind of ideology is transformed through the policy by means of evaluation, and what influence TTPPE has as well as its usage. The first section provides a brief introduction of the development of TTPPE. The second section illustrates how market ideology (mainly neo-liberalism) influences and transforms into policy agenda. The third section critiques original usage of TTPPE outcomes. The last section shows the visions and challenges for TTPPE. The research methods include policy analysis of official documents and interviewing four stakeholders and faculty members to understand their experience and reflection. The paper is expected to provide critical insights for future teacher preparation program evaluation projects as well as for other teacher programs evaluation.

It has been nearly two decades since the education reform movement initiated in Taiwan in 1994. As a consequence of the lift of martial law, this wave of education reform exceeds previous reforms in terms of scale, initiatives, and impacts. Although the performance of Taiwanese students has been in the leading group of various international rankings, the call for an education system that can cater various needs of students rather than focusing on academic achievement has been recurring in the public debate in Taiwan. How to maintain the existing performance and provide opportunities for students with different talents becomes the center of education reform. This paper aims at exploring the path of education reform in Taiwan with a focus on the shifting paradigm of education since 1994. Two aspects including teacher education and curriculum are discussed. We firstly introduce the social context of the recent education reform movement and then explicate the major trends of education reform and various key initiatives. In the third part of this paper, we map out the trajectory of policies, changes, and implementations in the above-mentioned aspects during education reform with the emerging issues, challenges, and future directions. This paper offers international readers insights on how a well-performed education system attempts to improve itself within a complicated and fast-changing social and political context. We argue that unsuccessful reform attempts might provide more lessons than those successful ones. This paper is based on the discussion of two unsuccessful attempts made by the Ministry of Education to reveal the bumping reforming process in Taiwan.

With the global expansion of higher education in the last two decades, the maintenance of academic quality to meet requirements for international competitiveness has become a critical issue for policymakers and universities. In addition, the neoliberal emphasis on the market has increased the competition for global university rankings, and this emphasis continues to have consequences for university autonomy and academic governance. To cope with these challenges, Taiwan has introduced strategies for benchmarking its leading universities. Under the new evaluation system, universities are evaluated by external standards instead of those ensuring academic autonomy or contributions to society. This article details how these recent policy reforms have given rise to a new "SSCI syndrome", which risks turning faculty members into paper producers rather than public intellectuals. These changes have also impacted students' rights as well as the greater goals of academic development. The article then argues that, as voices from both within and outside of Taiwan's academia have begun to respond to the issue, it begs the question as to whether or not Taiwan can serve as a model for the many other non-English-speaking countries of the academic "periphery" who are currently confronting similar issues. Given the increasing global pervasiveness of this SSCI syndrome, understanding the effects of policies recently implemented in Taiwan has important implications for higher education throughout the world.

This paper considers the current status of academic performance and administrative leadership of women academics in Taiwan in the context of neo-liberalism. Emergent forces of higher education restructuring, including gender equity legislation have influenced Taiwanese universities to transition from authoritative state bureaucracies to more decentralised governance models. Qualitative research was used to frame and examine life situations, teaching and research, and performance of women academics. The study results showed that horizontal and vertical division of academic work, organisational roles and practices, and rewards and promotion are all gendered -- which persistently disadvantages women as a group in terms of realising their potential and achieving leadership status. In conclusion, even with the presence of gender equity regulations, gendered power has been and is still relayed through teaching and mentoring responsibilities, research resources and opportunities, curriculum, organisational culture, tenure promotion, and management practices in Taiwan's universities.

This paper discusses the effects of large-scale studies, including international comparative studies and national studies using nationally representative samples, on policy making and practices pertinent to mathematics education in Taiwan, through the lens of Taiwanese societal and cultural characteristics. Taiwan has been through several successful and unsuccessful initiatives to apply the findings of large-scale studies to change or formulate policies with regard to mathematics curricula, assessment reform, approaches to teaching and learning mathematics for specific groups of students, and criteria for primary school teacher certification. Examination of these policy initiatives may reveal the mechanisms of success and failure when applying large-scale study results to education reform. These education reform insights may provide valuable information to other countries.

As a result of massification of higher education and the quest for competitiveness, the Taiwanese government has adopted a series of higher education reforms since the late 1990s. While the low birthrate has become a potential threat, recent developments in higher education policies such as the Program for Developing First-Class Universities and Top Research Centers, the Incentives for Teaching Excellences, and the new Multiple Examination Program have had considerable effects on students of different gender and socioeconomic classes. Even though the expansion in higher education has enabled many students to enter universities, inequality remains, as students from different socioeconomic backgrounds are distributed to different types/ranks of universities. Students from the lower socioeconomic class are mostly concentrated in private or vocational (science and technology) universities, while students from well-off families have better chances to enter elite universities. Moreover, the gender segregation in different fields of study has not been improved as a result of the aforementioned massification. Female students are still concentrated in the humanities and social sciences and encounter more difficulties in finding jobs upon graduation. Consequently, these graduates' salaries tend to be much lower compared with their counterparts in science and technology fields. The study further argues that class and gender are actually intertwined and should not be examined separately. In addition, issues such as race and disability need to be closely examined, as the number of students with mothers from Southeast Asia and Mainland China has been significantly increasing in Taiwan these days. (Contains 6 tables.)

Throughout the world, rapid political and economic change has applied enormous pressure on educators addressing leadership and accountability measures to improve instructional practices and student performance. Decentralisation of central authority regarding school site-based decision-making has drastically changed the educational environment in which the duties of school administration have become much more demanding. This paper, in reviewing reform initiatives and school leadership research in Taiwan, introduces first the background of Taiwanese educational reform, then discusses the challenges and dilemmas that school leaders typically face. New leadership practices, such as instructional leadership and teacher leadership, are developed to respond to the needs of educational reform. Finally, this paper analyses the literature of school leadership research in Taiwan, having discovered that quantitative methods have predominated; in addition, a gap exists between leadership practices and academic studies. This paper, therefore, suggests future themes and multiple uses of methodologies in the education field to contribute to academic practices worldwide. (Contains 1 figure.)

Taiwan has undergone radical innovation of its educational system in the wake of political liberalization and democratization, with a request for a change in the idea which diverts from "de-centralization" to "individualization." The reforms have led to two main features of pluralism and generalization of education in our current education system with a view to more equal and plural opportunities of education for students in Taiwan. Nevertheless, a number of reform tasks have been done in haste without discretion and have developed various problems with some deriving from the inherent educational system and some from the reform tasks themselves. The paper discusses three major educational reform concerns and the problems associated with these concerns including multilingual learning in elementary schools, overexpansion of higher education institutions and 12-year compulsory education.

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of education reform in selected Southeast Asian nations between 1995 and 2007. It reports the results of a purposive survey of elite informants comprising scholars and educational leaders involved in education reform in Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The paper addresses two main questions: What have been the main obstacles to education reform in Southeast Asia? And is there anything unique about the process of educational reform and change in Southeast Asia or anything different from processes reported in the Western literature? Although the paper finds more similarities than differences in the process of education reform in Southeast Asia, the author notes distinctive obstacles to reform in these societies. These differences are linked to a cultural explanation of educational change. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide the rationale and context for recent national policy and funded initiatives to support sustainability developments within higher education in Taiwan, including practical and educational aspects. Concrete examples and specific outcomes are reviewed, to produce a profile across the higher education sector and its diverse range of institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis contained here considers the main policy developments, practical challenges, and future prospects for sustainable development in Taiwanese higher education. The government initiated and funded a national project that connects education and practice for sustainability, the Taiwan Sustainable Campus Program (TSCP), which is profiled in this paper. Findings: In 2009, more than 507 (12 percent) of all institutions have been funded in the TSCP and more than 50 percent of the smallest administrative units in Taiwan now have at least one sustainable campus in the district. Institutions in the program have generated hundreds of teaching modules for various subjects, disseminated sustainability thinking effectively within neighboring communities, and worked extensively at "grass-roots" level with local residents to build more sustainable societies. Themed research has been developed to meet institutional needs for technical advancement to improve the practice of sustainable development. Practical implications: It is hoped that the execution of TSCP will serve as a model for educators and governmental officials, to inform national efforts to promote different methods of sustainability practice and education in different national and social contexts. Originality/value: The success of the TSCP design and implementation mechanisms is evident in the rapid growth in the number of institutions taking part over a short period of time. The level of voluntary and productive participation involved suggests that targeted funding for original approaches to connect sustainability practice and education can be an extremely effective vehicle to promote sustainability in higher education. Recognizing the vigorous competition presently affecting universities, mostly concerning academic publications or revenue for maintaining operations, closer ties with programs and incentives from other governmental agencies, to support research or renovation activities, should help TSCP to become an even more sustainable and productive endeavour. (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper aims to investigate the possible framework for encouraging the presence of local dimensions in an internationalised and globally competitive system by using Taiwan's higher education system as a case. It begins by discussing the notion of internationalisation and its implications for higher education. It then turns to look at Taiwan's responses to these global developments. It also reviews different opinions on the position and importance of local dimensions in the world of globalised higher education. Based on these perspectives, the paper advocates promoting the concept of state-building in Taiwan's as well as in other higher education systems for preserving or even strengthening the local dimensions of individual academic systems operating in the international knowledge network.

This paper explores indigenization and globalization, the double issue of curriculum and identity as a dialectical contradiction that characterizes the ambivalence of "Taiwanese identity." "Taiwanese identity" is treated as a social, political, and cultural construct rather than a fixed term in an essentialist sense. Curriculum, as culture's medium of social identity construction, represents a struggle over who constructs whose identity and what is constructed. Therefore, when curriculum reform is called for, it is also a time when a society transitioning and redrawing its socio-political and cultural boundaries to resolve internal social conflicts and identity anxiety. Curriculum reform, in this paper, is analyzed not only as a question of shifting explicit ideas of educational practice but also a question of shifting configurations in power relations that signify a politics of identity. The historical context that brought about the question of identity in Taiwan is introduced first. The second section discusses how emerging curricula were politically, socially, and culturally implicated in the process of constructing a Taiwan-centric identity. The third section analyzes the political, social, cultural, and educational implications of new curricula on the formation of a Taiwan-centric identity. Finally, the paper discusses the effect of globalization on the practice of new curricula and points out an ambivalence of local-global identity construction and the conflicting roles of education, especially curriculum, in this ambivalence.

This paper investigates the opinions of parents on some critical issues relating to recent educational reforms and their effects on foreign language education in Taiwan, particularly those aspects of the reforms that relate to the learning of English as a foreign language in the country. The paper noted that educational reforms in the country are dictated down from the authorities with little input from the public at large. This process has often resulted in complaints and confusion among the population, and consequently further reforms have often been rushed through in order to plug the emerging lacunae. The study found that much of the changes embarked upon by the government are out of tune with parental perceptions and expectations. It strongly recommends the need to develop a process of societal participation and parental consultation in educational planning and language policy issues, prior to the implementation of such reforms through the education process. This way, frequent changes and the attendant confusion that have characterized the education system in Taiwan can be minimized. Other suggestions are offered towards enhancing the teaching of English as a foreign language in Taiwan. (Contains 8 tables and 4 endnotes.)

Background: Media education is the study of the media with the aim of cultivating people's media literacy. In the past four decades, media education has rapidly developed in school systems and communities all over the world. Each country has its own developmental trajectory. With the rise of the interactive new media, media education is going to have a paradigm shift, bringing media education study into a new era. Goals: This paper discusses the rationales, definitions and approaches of media education. It also provides an overview about the global development of media literacy training. Results: Although different countries define media education in different ways, they share the common goal of training media literate people to deal with the media in an intelligent and responsible way. Media education has been well developed in the West but in recent years Asia regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China and Japan are gaining their momentum. With the emergence of various new media devices, media education is regarded as playing a more important role in cultivating wise prosumers in the 21st century.

New subjects are always emerging but only some gain a place in the formal school curriculum. In fact, most of the now accepted conventional school subjects have, at some stage, struggled to become established. This paper presents findings of a three-year study of teacher and school responses to the introduction of environmental education (EE) as a new subject within the Taiwan national curriculum. School leaders and teachers were interviewed the year prior to the introduction of the new curriculum and during the first two years of implementation. Findings substantiate the importance of six themes (such as examination status and a university pathway) raised in elaborations of the traditional Layton/Goodson model. However, the complex community-school relationships and the value accorded in EE to community-based and even global action, as opposed to academic outcomes, highlighted the need for curriculum policy makers to consider expanding the traditional model with another five themes and most importantly introducing three particular themes. When seeking to promote the emergence of a holistic and integrative subject such as environmental education there is a need to also consider local environment involvement, the transformative nature of EE within whole school involvement, and linkages with a national cooperation network. Without these factors it appears EE may struggle to gain a place in the curriculum.

East Asian dominance in international large-scale assessments is widely known. This is often explained as an outcome of highly competitive, exam-oriented education systems in East Asia, wherein students partake in a fierce competition for limited college entrance. Although achievement scores may be comparatively higher, the argument goes, the relative success comes at a steep price, with the emphasis on high-stakes tests heightening student stress and anxiety. In this paper we refute this persistent and out-dated stereotype by focusing on changes in Japanese education over the past several decades. The two original studies we report herein show that not only do Japanese students feel less school-related anxiety and stress than they once did, but these levels are now comparable to students in America, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In showing that stereotypes do not match empirical realities, we seek to open a richer discussion around East Asian student achievement. We conclude by extending the discussion to recent changes in China, Taiwan, and South Korea. We then raise the possibility that fundamentally different outlooks on the learning process explain both differences in achievement and the persistence of the West's distorted images of Japanese and East Asian education.

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.)

This paper focuses on the process and mechanism of higher education policy change related to quality assurance in a globalized world. In particular, the purpose of the study was to identify the impact of globalization on domestic policy change in Taiwan, characterized as a peripheral country. Taiwan's experience in terms of developing a national quality assurance system for higher education (1975-2013) was analyzed as a case study, based on the theories of new institutionalism. The analysis showed that in the whole process of policy change, the government retained significance through playing the role of policy entrepreneur. Regarding the mechanism of policy change, both bricolage and translation were identified in the process. However, translation tended to appear in the most recent period, which saw quality assurance schemes that spread from other places adopted in the local context, albeit with considerable modification. This would imply that, even in the global context, higher education policy change could come in different forms.

This article aims to investigate how the discourse on national identity is approached in the new Taiwanese citizenship curriculum. The differing opinions on Taiwan's relationship with China and the constant threat from this rising superpower have deterred the explicit promotion of either a Taiwanese or Chinese identity. The new curriculum follows a strategy of "intentional ambiguity", where neither identity is mentioned. In this "polysemous" form, the curriculum has been criticized for staying silent on the question of cultivating a national identity. However, the curriculum developers interviewed for this paper suggested that parents and pupils who examine the new curriculum can find support for whichever national identity they favor since it is designed in such an inclusive manner. They can then simultaneously reflect on the multiple, divergent or competing meanings behind the "polysemous texts" and this "hermeneutic" process of reasoning can then facilitate the choice of national identity with maximum acceptance.

This paper uses data from a four-year college in Taiwan to examine the effect of adopting a stricter dismissal policy on course selection, student effort, and grading practices. Under the new rule, students are dismissed if they fail 50 percent or more credits in "any" two semesters as opposed to two "consecutive" semesters. The results show students who had failed 50 percent or more credit hours in a semester are more likely to strategically enroll in leniently graded courses after the policy change, especially in classes with a low failure rate. Study time and class attendance increase significantly after the policy change, suggesting the policy has achieved its goal of encouraging student effort. Instructors are found to grade more leniently after the policy change and the effect remains strong after student effort is controlled for. More importantly, instructors lower grading standards mainly through failing fewer students, as opposed to giving higher grades.

This paper presents an analysis of quality culture (QC) development in Taiwan which has recently undergone major reforms of quality assurance (QA) policies. The implementation of internal quality assurance (IQA) initiatives has been an indispensable condition to form a QC in higher education which contributes to a fundamental and comprehensive evolution of Taiwanese higher education. To explore the government's policy strategies and transformation of QA approaches, this paper interviews policymakers, QA experts and academics. This paper identifies common features and distinct characteristics of QC in Taiwan's higher education, and its relations to QA mechanisms. These perspectives offer a different way of conceptualising QC in QA policies. Furthermore, QC development has not only served the purpose of enhancing quality in higher education but has also acted as a driver for QA and higher education changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) has been constructed as a new site for educational, sociocultural, political, and economic investment. Coupled with such a growing and popular recognition of ECEC as a significant period of children's learning and development are critical issues concerning accountability, affordability, and accessibility to quality education and care for all. Highlighting the preschool education systems in Taiwan and Hong Kong as two examples from Asia, this paper aims to open up a discursive space for reconceptualizing the effects of neoliberal discourse and how such a system of reasoning reconstructed notions of inclusion/exclusion to limit the making of quality education and the provision of care for all.