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With the rapid development of the Chinese economy and society, the number of international schools in China has increased sharply. As a core part of school quality, the curriculum development in international schools is facing a series of challenges due to the changing requirements from both the government and the market. In order to better understand the current practices of curriculum development in these international schools in China, this study adopts Tyler’s and Gu’s curriculum theories to design a questionnaire to collect data from 104 international schools national-wide. In addition, a semi-structured interview for teachers and principals was also conducted in nine international schools in five different cities in China.

The findings show that most international schools aim at cultivating “global citizens” or “leaders and elites.” In China, most schools attach importance to foreign language teaching, and most courses are offered in English. Group work, inquiry and discussion, and project-based learning are frequently adopted in international schools. The findings also show there is a strong integration of “Chinese culture” and “global vision,” and schools generally try to balance the two aspects. Some schools rely heavily on foreign curriculum resources, and are in urgent need of capacity building in term of curriculum development based on Chinese policy, market demands and their school realities. Compared with developed countries, international schools in China endorse the new mission, mixing the requirements of modernization and globalization at the same time. Therefore, how to reconstruct a Chinese neo-modern curriculum system is the fundamental challenge for all international schools in China.

This chapter aims to investigate and interpret China’s educational aid by analyzing its history, philosophies, and practices in Africa. The study is based on review and analysis of governmental documents, reports, academic papers, and news by Chinese and foreign scholars on China’s aid, particularly educational aid to Africa. The analysis unveils three transformations of China’s aid “from pro-ideology to de-ideology,” “from single area to multiple areas,” and “from pragmatic economy driven to sustainable and humane economy focused” in Africa. Meanwhile, it indicates a continuity of the philosophy of solidarity, morality, and reciprocity in China’s South-South cooperation with African educational development.

The analysis also shows China’s educational aid does not match well with the framework of the Western donors. China, under the FOCAC framework, is devoted to higher education cooperation, human resources training program, scholarship, and Chinese language education with African partners. With the growth of its economic and political influence, China will play multiple roles as the biggest developing country and as an active promoter and provider for South-South cooperation in the negotiation and construction of the post-2015 agenda. Nevertheless, we assume China will keep a pragmatic higher education cooperation with its developing country partners to inclusively link it with business, technology transfer, and people-to-people exchange.

This study delivers a comprehensive review and analysis of paradigm shift, philosophy, mechanism, and practice of China’s educational aid to Africa to fill up the literature gap in this field. It also timely presents China’s stance toward discussion on the post-2015 agenda.

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the dichotomous nature of two World Bank educational goals and examine how enrollment growth became prioritized over quality in Tanzania. Nestled within the theoretical framework of developmental discourse, the chapter begins with a historical review of World Bank educational policy, exploring Tanzania's lending relationship with the Bank. The chapter next evaluates the new World Bank 2020 educational strategy using the Tanzanian context to draw attention to policy strengths and weaknesses. Finally, using current research regarding World Bank policy in Tanzania, this chapter explores the implications of the new strategy on the next installment of Tanzania's SEDP policy. By locating the intersections of these policies, one may gauge a better understanding as to why the past trend of flooding Tanzania's classrooms with students has had the effect of eroding educational quality.

We investigate how communities in China use schools to create and reproduce the values, knowledge, and social expectations that engender social capital. We focus on private and girls’ education, and report on the experiences of four schools between 1995 and 2005. We argue that, beyond schools’ contribution to the skills acquired by individual students, whether they promote the formation of social capital within communities should be a part of our assessment of their effectiveness. Schools as centers of activism can provide communities a forum for formulating their social demands and identities. In this context, social capital formation provides a useful heuristic for reclaiming the language of social justice and considering the human ends of education.

This chapter adopts a post-development framework in combination with a spatial lens exploring how actors in two localities in the South-East and North-East in the post-colonial setting of Benin (West Africa) interact in mediating the policy of education decentralisation. Doing so throws into sharp relief the multiple complexities of local practices and how these impact the processes of exclusion/inclusion, mitigating the achievement of equity and decolonisation. The findings point to how paradoxically, decentralisation processes, seeking to broaden participation, result in strengthening central and municipal government entities, thereby subjugating parents' voices. Simultaneously, this chapter nuances inclusion from a spatial lens, such as the influence of NGOs in one fieldsite and the power of the central administration in the other. In light of uneven power relations in enacting Benin's decentralisation policy and the insignificance of the local specificities, this book chapter concludes that inclusion remains a challenge to deal with beyond global governance policies.

The indigenous peoples of the Philippines have had to struggle against historical injustices for centuries. They fought against colonization and the subjugation of their cultures and ways of life. Over the decades, their next generations are confronted with exclusion, discrimination, and encroachments on their ancestral domains which have resulted in social and economic disadvantages. An obvious case in point is the lack of sympathetic and affirmative policy directives for the culture-based education of indigenous children and youth. This paper reflects on the policy development processes undertaken to institutionalize inclusion and social justice in indigenous peoples education policies within the K to 12 Basic Education Program. Using the method of narrative inquiry, the stories of reform are told from the point of view of those who facilitated the crafting of these policies. Three narratives demonstrate that contextualized and empowering education strategies and processes transform not only policy but also the policy makers.

Similar to other parts of the United States, its southern region is still wrestling with the implications of the resegregation of America’s schools. Unlike other parts of the country, however, the Deep South demons are rooted in a vastly different historical context. This chapter offers an historical analysis of the educational problems in the Deep South, with strong emphasis on gifted programming. Further, in this chapter, we present and describe a framework that could guide educators as they strive to identify giftedness among children of color and implement programming in a culturally responsive manner.

This chapter explores middle leadership identity through the real-world accounts of how two middle leaders construct and develop their leadership identity and how this impacts the way their middle leadership is practiced. Leadership identity, an internal narrative of oneself as a leader which is practised professionally in context, represents a concept that is best understood as being unique to an individual, enduring over time, and a consequence of human experiences. Middle leadership is often the first promotion for teachers from teacher to leader and, as such, how middle leaders perceive themselves as a leader and how this formative process of leadership identity underpins middle leaders’ practices can make a significant impact on a leader’s decision making, professional relationships, behaviours, and actions. This chapter is co-authored by two researchers and two middle leaders with the intention of understanding middle leader identity development and its influence on middle leadership practices. Using interviews, middle leaders’ stories of identity were co-composed and re-storied to construct each middle leader’s narrative. This chapter concludes with a discussion on the influences of identity for middle leaders and considerations for leadership development.

Education is primary a state and local responsibility in the United States. It is states and communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation. The appropriate roles for state in the education of all children continue to be an issue of urgent concern. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates cooperating and reporting between state and federal educational agencies. State educational agencies, in turn, must ensure that local schools and teachers are meeting the state’s educational standards. The importance of this responsibility creates controversy on how public education should be implemented and what policy directions state and local governments should take. It is apparent that enhancing public education programs to benefit all students requires a process of system change, as opposed to isolated programs and invalidated instructional practices often common with programming in some school districts. This chapter discusses the role of government agencies in enhancing special education and problems associated with it.