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How do institutional settings and their embedded policy principles affect gender-typed enrolment in educational programmes? Based on gender-sensitive theories on career choice, we hypothesised that gender segregation in education is higher with a wider range of offers of vocational programmes. By analysing youth survey and panel data, we tested this assumption for Germany, Norway and Canada, three countries whose educational systems represent a different mix of academic, vocational and universalistic education principles. We found that vocational programmes are considerably more gender-segregated than are academic (e.g. university) programmes. Men, more so than women, can avoid gender-typed programmes by passing on to a university education. This in turn means that as long as their secondary school achievement does not allow for a higher education career, they have a higher likelihood of being allocated to male-typed programmes in the vocational education and training (VET) system. In addition, social background and the age at which students have to choose educational offers impact on the transition to gendered educational programmes. Overall, gender segregation in education is highest in Germany and the lowest in Canada. We interpret the differences between these countries with respect to the constellations of educational principles and policies in the respective countries.

Within individual countries, the paths towards increasing educational attainment are not always linear and individuals are not equally affected. Differences between boys’ and girls’ educational attainments are a common expression of this inequality as boys are more often favored for continued schooling. We examine the importance of birth cohort, sibship size, migration, and school accessibility for explaining both the gender gap and its narrowing in secondary schooling in one district in Northeast Thailand between 1984 and 1994. Birth cohort is a significant explanation for the narrowing of the gender gap. Migration, sibship size, and remote village location are important explanations for limited secondary education opportunities, especially for girls.

The purpose of this chapter is to reveal explanations for completing upper secondary education. Focus is on the mechanisms that drive attainment of upper secondary education. I analyze the relative contributions of different factors measured by the relative increases in the log likelihood function. I also investigate the importance of characteristics other than the traditional variables, such as fathers’ and mothers’ occupations, their education, and household income, often applied in studies of educational attainment. I used a recent 1984 cohort database with information about educational completion and an informative set of measurements on noncognitive capacities, parental cultural capital, cultural capital, reading score, several school-related variables, and a rich set of family background variables. Attainment of upper secondary education was analyzed by a multinomial logit model, showing that characteristics other than the traditional variables all have significant importance. The analysis clearly depicted that the social position and educational levels of both parents remain important in determining whether the child embarks on completing an upper secondary education. Additionally, noncognitive dispositions show to be very important in explaining educational attainment, even when controlling for family background and refined cultural capital variables. Therefore, society should direct more efforts towards establishing children's cognitive and noncognitive skills and their ability to focus on schoolwork along with building their beliefs. Parents should be involved in a more content-sensitive sense when raising their children.

This chapter explores the difference in two orientations – didaktik and curriculum – and examines how these differing stances relate to teachers’ instructional practice, engagement with professional development opportunities, and lesson design. A didaktik orientation influences much of the Nordic and Germanic countries, while a curriculum orientation is widespread in Commonwealth of Nations and the United States. This chapter explores the differences between these two theories of learning and teaching. More than just different theories of teaching and learning, we argue these theories shape how we see the world (i.e., objectified vs. subjectified) and manifest themselves in distinctive understandings of schools’ purpose, the type of learning engaged therein, and how people learn. Consequently, these orientations affect the teacher’s role, the qualifications necessary to teach, as well as other aspects of teacher quality such as instructional methods, and types of professional development.

The aim of the chapter is to investigate the changing structural position of post-secondary schools in Poland, seen from the perspective of the expansion of higher education from one side and the current reform of vocational education from the other. Do post-secondary schools enhance opportunities for those who might not otherwise consider further education, especially when we consider lower cost, open admissions and greater accessibility in comparison with higher education institutions? Or do they play a role of a ‘discounted’ and ‘undervalued’ education for those who could not manage to enter three-year-bachelor cycles in tertiary education and thus were forced to lower their initial educational aspirations? The opening up of higher education to new student populations was done by the rapid expansion of the private (paid for) sector and the fee-paying courses in the public sector. Liberal educational policy not only opened an opportunity for the privatization in higher education, but also expanded the market-driven provision at the post-secondary level. The discussion on the relevance of post-secondary vocational qualifications must be seen within the context of the continual inflation of diplomas/degrees and the unemployment of graduates after finishing higher education. Since 2010, there has been a reverse process initiated at the governmental level in Poland: reform schemes to increase the participation of young people in vocational education and training. However, the structural position and functions of post-secondary schools, as well as their role in the employability of young people, are not subject to any open discussion at the political level. This sort of status quo concerning post-secondary institutions means that their institutional identity issues are resolved and their structural position defined predominantly by market forces.

In the context of globalisation, setting standards for excellence in education is considered necessary to enhance human capital to ensure future global competitiveness of the national economies (Rasmussen & Lingard, 2018). In line with education thus being set up as the basis for the economy, the development of talent has become an important part of the education political agenda in Denmark. This agenda claims that the Danish mass of talent should develop to a high level, and even more students should reach the highest levels of excellence (Ministry of Education, 1997). Accordingly, it labels the next generation of students ‘the mass of talent’.

This chapter questions the terms of talent applied in global education policies and their enactment into other agendas of concurrent standardisation and diversity. Empirically, the analysis of the wider policy context draws on policy texts at EU, OECD, and national level, in particular a ministerial report from 2011 (Rasmussen & Ydesen, 2020), as well as information materials and ethnographic case study research on a talent programme at upper secondary school level in Denmark (Bomholt & Rasmussen, 2020).

The analysis departs in an ambition to uncover the questions, how do global education policies frame standards for talent in a national context and how does this standardisation interact with the standards produced in the local programme? Therefore, the chapter focuses on the terms of talent applied in policy contexts at different levels of the specific case. For this, it employs the analytical approach of policy technologies (Ball, 2008), which involves viewing talent from the three policy technological perspectives of market, management and performance. They form a generic part of global convergence and work across the public sector as a whole.

It combines the empirical levels of macro and micro by referring to policy text and enactment at the global, national and local school level. The combination means first outlining the historical background for the policies in question and then considering how local actors bring their terms of talent into action at municipal and school level (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012), emphasising the different actor rationalities.

The purpose of the chapter is to give an overview of special education in Iceland, historically and with reference to modern use of terms, research, policy, legal trends and funding. Recent data is provided on demographic developments amongst children in Iceland and detailed account is given of practices in schools, including collaboration with parents and teacher education. Finally some issues and challenges are discussed that still remain to be solved with respect to meeting the special needs of students in school. One of the findings is that only 1.3% of students attend special schools and special classes and that the term special education has outlived its usefulness except perhaps in the context of the three segregated special schools that still remain in the country. Official papers have replaced it with the term special support. Despite a diversity of views and practices the main implication is that a new model of education is required, in line with that proposed by Slee where the needs of individuals are served in all schools and the binary thinking related to regular versus special education is no longer necessary.

Building on my earlier work (Dang, 2007, 2008), this chapter provides an updated review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam including the reasons, scale, intensity, form, cost, and legality of these classes. In particular, this chapter offers a comparative analysis of the trends in private tutoring between 1998 and 2006 using all available data.

This chapter analyzes data from different sources, including (i) the 2006 Vietnam Household Living Standards Measurement Survey (VHLSS), (ii) the 1997–1998 Vietnam Living Standards Measurement Survey (VLSS), (iii) the 2008 Vietnam Household Testing Survey (VHTS), and (iv) local press in Vietnam. Quantitative methods are used.

Several (micro-)correlates are examined that are found to be strongly correlated with student attendance at tutoring, including household income, household heads’ education and residence areas, student current grade level, ethnicity, and household sizes. In particular, I focus on the last three variables that received little attention in the previous literature on the determinants of tutoring.

This chapter provides an updated and systematic review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam. Findings are highly relevant to the ongoing debates on private tutoring among all stakeholders in Vietnam, as well as policymakers/researchers in other countries. Suggestions are proposed on current gaps in the literature for future research.

Along with the other Nordic welfare states, Norway has achieved relative gender parity as measured by the Gender Gap Index of the United Nations (Hausmann, Tyson, & Zahidi, 2006) and is therefore looked upon by many as a model in minimising gender gaps in the society. With a 47 per cent share of the active labour force in the country, Norwegian women have had a high level of labour market participation since the late 1980s. In addition, Norway ranks among the top countries in the world in terms of offering women and men equal access to education at all levels, equal access to leadership positions in the workplace and in politics and generous parental leave benefits. Although gender parity in education at all levels as well as in labour market participation is a reality in Norway, there are significant gender differences vis-à-vis in career aspiration among students and the Norwegian labour market is characterized by gender segregation (Foss, 2005) which results in a gender gap in pay where women earn less than men.

Given the global surge toward the decolonization of curriculum and greater educational equity during the past year, this study helps us to understand the forces and factors that support or inhibit greater equitable access to quality education for all children. In this chapter, the authors analyze and compare a myriad of challenges experienced by the United States and South Africa as they attempt to move beyond a history of racial segregation and apartheid to more equitable access to quality education for all learners. The chapter begins with a brief historical synopsis of each country’s attempts to move beyond years of entrenched racial segregation and/or apartheid governance to greater life chances for all individuals. This discussion includes the role and negative impact of race, ethnicity, geography, language, and/or socio-economic status on enhanced access to equitable education for all. A review of key theoretical perspectives follows and will help to explain how such inequities have survived, as well as how they might be transformed into agents for positive social change. The chapter concludes by suggesting a “way forward” derived from positive historical examples of exceptionally high quality education experienced by some learners, even during difficult periods of racial segregation.