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We are delighted to welcome you to the International Conference on Education and New Developments 2015-END 2015, taking place in Porto, Portugal, from 27 to 29 of June. Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the human being, in the way one thinks, feels and acts. One of the most important contributions resides in what and how we learn through the improvement of educational processes, both in formal and informal settings. Our International Conference seeks to provide some answers and explore the processes, actions, challenges and outcomes of learning, teaching and human development. Our goal is to offer a worldwide connection between teachers, students, researchers and lecturers, from a wide range of academic fields, interested in exploring and giving their contribution in educational issues. We take pride in having been able to connect and bring together academics, scholars, practitioners and others interested in a field that is fertile in new perspectives, ideas and knowledge. We counted on an extensive variety of contributors and presenters, which can supplement our view of the human essence and behavior, showing the impact of their different personal, academic and cultural experiences. This is, certainly, one of the reasons we have many nationalities and cultures represented, inspiring multi-disciplinary collaborative links, fomenting intellectual encounter and development. END 2015 received 528 submissions, from 63 different countries, reviewed by a double-blind process. Submissions were prepared to take form as Oral Presentations, Posters, Virtual Presentations and Workshops. It was accepted for presentation in the conference, 176 submissions (33% acceptance rate). The conference also includes a keynote presentation from an internationally distinguished researcher, Professor Dr. Martin Braund, Adjunct Professor at Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, South Africa and Honorary Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of York, UK, to whom we express our most gratitude. This volume is composed by the proceedings of the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2015), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.) and had the help of our respected media partners that we reference in the dedicated page. This conference addressed different categories inside the Education area and papers are expected to fit broadly into one of the named themes and sub-themes. To develop the conference program we have chosen four main broad-ranging categories, which also cover different interest areas: (1) In TEACHERS AND STUDENTS: Teachers and Staff training and education; Educational quality and standards; Curriculum and Pedagogy; Vocational education and Counseling; Ubiquitous and lifelong learning; Training programs and professional guidance; Teaching and learning relationship; Student affairs (learning, experiences and diversity); Extra-curricular activities; Assessment and measurements in Education. (2) In PROJECTS AND TRENDS: Pedagogic innovations; Challenges and transformations in Education; Technology in teaching and learning; Distance Education and eLearning; Global and sustainable developments for Education; New learning and teaching models; Multicultural and (inter)cultural communications; Inclusive and Special Education; Rural and indigenous Education; Educational projects. (3) In TEACHING AND LEARNING: Educational foundations; Research and development methodologies; Early childhood and Primary Education; Secondary Education; Higher Education; Science and technology Education; Literacy, languages and Linguistics (TESL/TEFL); Health Education; Religious Education; Sports Education. (4) In ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES: Educational policy and leadership; Human Resources development; Educational environment; Business, Administration, and Management in Education; Economics in Education; Institutional accreditations and rankings; International Education and Exchange programs; Equity, social justice and social change; Ethics and values; Organizational learning and change. The proceedings contain the results of the research and developments conducted by authors who focused on what they are passionate about: to promote growth in research methods intimately related to teaching, learning and applications in Education nowadays. It includes an extensive variety of contributors and presenters, who will extend our view in exploring and giving their contribution in educational issues, by sharing with us their different personal, academic and cultural experiences. (Individual papers contain references.)

Postwar officials in Japan, like their counterparts in Germany, faced the daunting task of rebuilding their country’s relationships with other states and of placing these relations on a new foundation to replace the discredited politics of their recent past. In these circumstances, Konrad Adenauer and the CDU in Germany moved quickly to cement alliance ties with the West, to pursue broader institutional arrangements in Europe, and to commit themselves in general to arrangements that limited rather than reasserted the power of the German state. Superficially, Japan appears to have followed a similar course through its defense pact with the U.S. and its constitutional renunciation of military forces. Yet Japan’s decisive postwar Prime Minister, Shigeru Yoshida, embraced none of these goals. Although he sought strict limits on the Japanese military establishment, he was eager to reassert the power and sovereign right of the Japanese state. Moreover, he embraced the international commitments of the Defense Treaty only with great reluctance. And, even so, he was roundly criticized for having gone too far. A constructivist analysis of language, rules, and order helps to account for Japan’s postwar choices. Trying to find its place in a new international order, Japan confronted a specific instance of a generic problem of order. Speech act theory identifies three strategic pathways for managing such problems, leading to three different cultures of order: Hobbesian (or directive), Lockean (or assertive), and Kantian (or commissive). Postwar circumstances ruled out one of these, the Hobbesian strategy, in Japan (and Germany). Despite their similar structural positions, Japan and Germany made different choices from among the remaining alternatives--choices that continue to reverberate in contemporary Japanese and German foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given their economic capacity and tradition as the major providers of Overseas Development Aid, global development policy is an obvious field for much more advanced co-operation between Europe and Japan. However, while there are similar intentions and responsibilities, actual policies and preferences differ. Apart from different regional emphases, there are also different normative considerations that guide European and Japanese development assistance. Japan and Europe seem agree on a philosophy that emphasises humanitarian considerations, an appreciation of the concept of “human security”, the recognition of global interdependence, environmental conservation and potential for self-help as desirable conditions for development aid. When actual decisions on donations are made, many other considerations, among them traditional notions of regional hegemony and trade interest, seem to guide policy-makers in both regions. The paper looks at shared and differing concepts of Japanese and European development aid and asks whether better co-ordination between the poles could change the global debate on development aid. The paper has a normative agenda which is, however, rooted in a remarkably deep understanding of the practicalities of Japanese ODA. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between the economic globalization, loosening of vertical intergovernmental relations and the emergence of regionalism is often discussed in the literature, particularly in European contexts. In the American context, despite the fact that the federal government has been taking devolutionary policy since the 1980s and contributing to the global economy, there has been no notable local government regionalism, except for the merger of the city of Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky in 2003. Japan has been implementing government restructuring toward neoliberal decentralization since the 1990s while globalization strained national political economy and stimulated regionalism at the local level. This paper explains that regionalism emerged in Japan because of the changing negotiation powers of the local governments against the central government and the changing importance of the local economies to the central government under globalization. Under this condition, Japanese central government implemented devolution while made targeted investments in the growth pole. This uneven development policy produced regionalism and local statism in the neglected areas. From this, this paper suggests that the changing central-local government relations resulting from the political repercussions of globalization stimulates local statism and leads to the development of regionalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical Chinese military thought is undoubtedly a precious cultural heritage from the East. However, the US-led West has thus far a limited understanding of the true beauty of the strategic thinking in this treasure house. This study uses the world’s oldest board game, Weiqi (or Go), to bring out the essence of classical Chinese military and strategic thinking. The game of Weiqi bears striking resemblance to international relations and warfare. It also exemplifies the Chinese military classics to a remarkable extent. Weiqi has also been a national game of Japan for well over 1,500 years. It is currently very popular in China, Japan, Korea, and is spreading rapidly across the European and American continents (thanks to the development of internet). As the hegemonic United States seeks to maintain a strategic edge over a rising Pacific Asia, a little knowledge of this ancient board game will take US national leaders a long way in understanding Eastern strategic thinking and achieving the US foreign policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biotechnology, as a unique technology, has become pervasive in the state-economy and world-society relations and is implicated as a knowledge-driven revolution that will change the direction or future of human life. Biotechnology’s potential for new discoveries to advance human progress through the powerful techniques of recombinant DNA is a powerful tool in the development strategies of nations. Its scientific, productive and financial aspects are sensitive to the dictates of global markets and have a transformative capacity in fostering (with integrated circuits) the next renewed expansion of the world economy. As a high and/or strategic technology (HST) it is capable of promoting growth. It is a phenomenon in possession of a dual novel characteristics ? its evolutionary capability and its unique power of replication or multiplication which, as a high intensity science and/or frontier technology (HISFT), confers on it salient agricultural and medical advantages. It is predicted that by the next twenty years a deluge of products running into trillions of dollars will be produced using rDNA technology. But the importance of science and technology in the international political economy is only meaningful or relevant within their socio-economic and political context. And in their social and political construct emerge as instruments of power and hegemony. The heuristic nature of biotechnology development is that of a structuralist dimension engendered by a world capitalist economy, of a trimodal arrangement of core, semiperiphery, and periphery countries within the international division of labor and production. This structuralist dimension and trimodal arrangement are of intrinsic causal relevance to the ontological analysis of biotechnology development, since as a highly commodified technology it introduces the concept of knowledge as property, and therefore the issues of innovation, transfer and the diffusion of techniques, products and produce become subject to national and international regimes of protection rights. And this commercialization of knowledge, in security and production structures, confers both structural and relational power, and too becomes an important determinant in the race to who becomes the next hegemon among the potential contenders, Japan, the United States, and German-led Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]