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The use of cutting-edge technology in education has the potential to transform the learning experience and greatly contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in emerging economies. With the increased accessibility of technology and online resources, digital literacy has become an essential skill in today's world. Smart e-learning platforms have emerged as a new tool for offering education and training in emerging economies, while also boosting digital literacy.

This chapter will attempt to investigate the impact of new-age technologies on the educational system and how they can help emerging economies achieve the SDGs. This study looks at case studies from various emerging economies, analyzing how innovative technologies like digital learning, smart teaching and learning, mobile learning, online learning, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality, and gamification are used to improve education quality and promote SDGs. This chapter emphasizes the impact of technological integration on access to education, reducing inequality, and improving educational quality and relevance. This study also looks into how education may help promote environmental sustainability and economic growth. According to the findings, integrating new-age technologies into the education system can be a game changer in achieving SDGs in emerging nations.

Supporting students transitioning from high school into college continues to be a challenge for academics and policy-makers. Composition assignments that include Kuh’s (2008) High Impact Practices (HIP) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) rubric and HIP tenets of Civic Learning and Community Engagement (Fig. 1), help foster opportunities for empathy, which develops students’ abilities to think critically, write well, and succeed in college and beyond. While effective college teaching and instruction are necessary, increasing enrollments, and increasing percentages of First-Year Composition (FYC) students requiring supportive composition courses compound the difficulties of the effort. According to AAC&U, “a global community requires a more informed, engaged, and socially responsible citizenry” (2009, p. 1; Finley & McNair, 2013). In other words, educators and employers believe that “personal and social responsibility should be core elements of a 21^st-century education” (AAC&U, 2009, p. 1). This conceptual content analysis study framed by HIP analyzed 10 FYC syllabi from different composition faculty at one urban Hispanic public four-year university (SMU) in Southern California during the 2015–2016 academic year in the context of the university’s mission statement embracing Civic Learning and Community Engagement for FYC students.

This chapter presents an analysis of gender equity messages in textbooks and official educational documents in Mexico. For that purpose, critical pedagogy, understood as a framework to dissect power dynamics and gender relations in educational settings, is employed. From the point of view of critical pedagogy, stereotypes and imbalances of power are learned through everyday discourses and narratives and have been shaped by a long history of dominance and suppression; they are part of a system erected precisely to exercise control and limit possibilities particularly of those groups in the margins of society: poor, women, addicts, indigenous peoples, etc. Schools are regarded as spaces where inclusiveness is encouraged but also places where the reproduction of the status quo also occurs; in that sense, schools reflect whatever occurs in society at large, not only the positive cases but the bleak instances as well. Our main intention was to identify and examine books and documents on educational policy, guidelines, contents, or learning outcomes, which have been expressed to promote gender equity and respect for diversity. The idea is to identify whether the content that promotes equity is being communicated or if, on the contrary, gender stereotypes continue to be reinforced, the theme is avoided, or it is not considered relevant. We identified texts (activities and instructions) and images embodying messages connected to gender equity, or inequities, and even discourses that, proactively or by omission, perpetuate the transmission of gender stereotypes. The textbooks of Civic and Ethical Education of the final three grades of primary education are analyzed. A perusal of legal documents and official textbooks suggests that mixed messages that include both explicit statements of equity between binary gender options and implicit messages of superiority and authority attributed to men are somehow transmitted. In particular, the iconography let through implicit messages, probably unintentional but nonetheless powerful, in conveying stereotypes and imbalances of power.

This chapter contributes to deepening understandings of the diversity of young people’s political participation and the socio-political and cultural influences that shape the uptake of activism. Drawing on scholarly theorisation of ‘implicit activism’, it begins from the premise that forms of activism vary depending on the social values, culture, and politics of different societies. To unpack the relationships between socio-political and cultural contexts and different forms of activism, this study addresses the question: what kind of activism do Japanese citizenship teachers envisage for secondary school students? Interviews were conducted with 11 educators across Japan; data were thematically analysed, and findings suggest that Japanese citizenship teachers encourage implicit forms of activism. This includes students being encouraged to develop personal and political efficacy to participate in political structures and raise their voices. Teachers also aim to develop students’ critical thinking skills to analyse society, with a focus on decoding political messages in one’s daily life. In the Japanese social and cultural context, which favours cohesion rather than confrontation, the endorsement of philanthropic activism, such as making donations, is also evident. Findings indicate that implicit forms of activism are embedded in everyday life. The study offers fresh insights into less tangible forms of activism characterised by small acts that address social concerns and issues affecting people’s own lives and the lives of others. It is argued that such implicit activism should not be overlooked, for as with explicit activism, it is also centrally concerned with fostering change.

This chapter focuses on book bans in an American context via embedded power relations and overlapping cultural and political spheres. In particular, it examines how those who face the biggest impact, namely, public high school students, navigate their marginalized position as minors, to challenge the structures of authority represented by their parents and school administration. This chapter demonstrates the importance of personal identity claims, social networks, and the power of knowledge of one’s First Amendment rights, as mobilizing forces for students to demand social change. Case studies of protest by students to overturn book bans are examined. The purpose is to understand the effect of state prohibitions on education that strengthen a student’s symbolic power as a force in society, and in some cases, fosters resistance through community-level activism.

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Moreover, scholars who engage in the trendy internationalization in higher education should move beyond the logics of neo-liberalism, and pay closer attention to the new geopolitical realities that are changing the normative and interactive dimensions of international higher education at large.

Key international and intergovernmental organizations assess the size of the Roma population in Serbia to be around 4–600.000, rendering Serbia among the five countries in Europe with the highest percentage of Roma population. Although Roma in Serbia have a long history of self-organization, cultural and media organizations, and are formally recognized as national minorities with a National Council of the Roma National Minority as a body with political decision-making influence, the Roma community in Serbia, as in most other European countries, is the most disadvantaged and underprivileged group in the country, often living in underdeveloped neighbourhoods with limited access to social services, especially education and health.

The educational attainment of the Roma population in Serbia, as in other countries in Europe, is far below the attainment of the general population. The education indicators are showing a developing trend, albeit slow. Roma integration policies evolved in Serbia from the early 2000s in the general policy framework of Equity of Education and Inclusive Education and a comprehensive education reform agenda, promoted and legally endorsed by the 2009 Law on the Foundations of the Education System. As the consequence of such an approach, the Roma integration policies intertwined and mutually reinforced with other reform policy areas. The most important post-2000 policies supporting the integration of Roma students into education are the introduction of pedagogical assistants in elementary schools and preschool institutions as a profession, paid from the budget, abolishing the system of school readiness assessment, introducing individual education plans and intensifying affirmative action and scholarships for enrolment in secondary and tertiary education.