This book focuses on private tutoring (sometimes also known as “shadow education”), an important but neglected topic in applied linguistics and language education research. Private tutoring has become a popular out-of-school learning activity worldwide. While its scope and definition are expanding, private tutoring commonly refers to the “paid service students used to supplement their learning of academic subjects at school outside school hours” (Yung, 2019). Around the world, English language is one of the most popularly enrolled subjects in private tutoring, including both English as a first language and English as an additional language (EAL). Despite its popularity and implications for theories, practices, and policies, research on English private tutoring is still in its infancy. This book aims to provide an international perspective on the interface between applied linguistics and comparative education and open up an agenda for discussion in theories, practices, and policies in English language teaching (ELT). It will be of interest to students, scholars, and policy-makers in these and related areas.

In all parts of Asia, households devote considerable expenditures to private supplementary tutoring. This tutoring may contribute to students' achievement, but it also maintains and exacerbates social inequalities, diverts resources from other uses, and can contribute to inefficiencies in education systems. Such tutoring is widely called shadow education, because it mimics school systems. As the curriculum in the school system changes, so does the shadow. This study documents the scale and nature of shadow education in different parts of the region. Shadow education has been a major phenomenon in East Asia and it has far-reaching economic and social implications.

Private supplementary tutoring, widely known as shadow education because of the way that it mimics mainstream schooling, has greatly expanded worldwide. It consumes considerable family resources, provides employment for tutors, occupies the time of students, and has a backwash on regular schools. Although such tutoring has become a major industry and a daily activity for students, tutors and families, the research literature has been slow to catch up with the phenomenon. The topic is in some respects difficult to research, precisely because it is shadowy. Contours are indistinct, and the actors may hesitate to share their experiences and perspectives. Presenting methodological lessons from diverse cultures, the book contains chapters from both high-income and low-income settings in Asia, Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East. Separately and together, the chapters present valuable insights into the design and conduct of research. The book will assist both consumers and producers of research. Consumers will become better judges of the strengths, weaknesses and orientations of literature on the theme; and producers will gain insights for design of instruments, collection of data, and interpretation of findings. The editors: Mark Bray is UNESCO Chair Professor in Comparative Education at the University of Hong Kong. Ora Kwo is an Associate Professor in the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong. Boris Jokić is a Scientific Associate in the Centre for Educational Research and Development at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia.

Shadow education, the practice of private tutoring outside formal schooling, has become pervasive in Asia. Driven by intense exam competition and dissatisfaction with mainstream education, it plays a significant role in the region's educational landscape. However, its implications and regulatory frameworks still need to be studied and better understood. This book, Shadow Education in Asia: Policies and Practices, addresses this gap by comprehensively analyzing shadow education policies and practices in Asia. Despite its prevalence, shadow education's impact on students, families, and educational systems is complex and multifaceted. The lack of comprehensive research and understanding has led to challenges regulating and integrating shadow education into formal educational systems. Policymakers and educators struggle to address issues such as educational equity, student well-being, and the quality of education provided through shadow education. This book aims to inform policy discussions and reform efforts, ultimately contributing to a more nuanced understanding of this phenomenon and its role in Asia's educational landscape.

“This book gives a voice to English language teachers faced with the challenges posed by English language curriculum change. As a core component of national state system curricula in virtually every country in the world, there has nevertheless been little research exploring how the millions of English teachers worldwide navigate the challenges posed by such curriculum changes. This volume includes eleven stories from teachers based across every continent, providing a global glimpse of how national English curriculum change projects have been experienced by classroom teachers who are commonly (if erroneously) viewed as mostly responsible for its implementation success or failure. The final chapter synthesises these experiences and suggests wider implications for the development of curriculum change planning processes, and how they might better support teachers’ attempts to achieve curriculum goals. Edited and authored by leading experts in the field, this ground-breaking collection will be of interest to students and scholars of English language teaching, teacher education, curriculum change and education policy.”

This edited volume focuses on the experiences of individuals learning languages other than English (LOTEs) in a range of Asian contexts that have traditionally been under-represented in the literature. Aligning with the ‘multilingual turn’ in SLA, it views learners as individuals of a multilingual society with unique, complex, heterogenous and dynamic identities. The chapters explore the learners’ motivational trajectories, multilingual identities and their conceptualisations of the ‘ideal multilingual self’. This volume enhances our critical understanding of language learning motivation through empirical findings and conceptual insights from studies of motivation in specific regions in Asia, including Greater China, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan and Syria. Providing insight into the multilingual identities of individuals learning LOTEs, it will appeal to students and scholars in second language acquisition, researchers in language learning motivation and policymakers in language education.

This edited book offers culturally-situated, critical accounts of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approaches in diverse educational settings, showcasing authentic examples of how CLIL can be applied to different educational levels from primary to tertiary. The contributors offer a research-based, critical view of CLIL opportunities, challenges and implications in the following areas: teacher education, continuing professional development, assessment, teacher-student dialogue, translanguaging, coursebooks, bilingual education, authenticity, language development and thinking skills. This wide-ranging volume will appeal to students and scholars of English Language Teaching (ELT), language policy and planning, bi- and multilingualism, and applied linguistics more broadly.

Study abroad is now both an international industry and an experience that can have a deep impact on students’ linguistic, cultural and personal development. This book explores ‘the social turn’ in the fields of study abroad and language learning strategies. The longitudinal qualitative study reported in this volume investigates the international educational experiences of Arab university students from diverse countries (Iraq, Libya, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates) and represents one of the few empirical studies to capture an in-depth understanding of the study abroad experiences of newly-arrived international students in higher education. Particular attention is paid to their changing learning goals, underlying motivations and strategy uses during their attendance on both short and long academic programmes in a study abroad context. It also examines their past language learning experiences in their homelands retrospectively. Readers will gain a better understanding of international students’ study abroad experiences in terms of their expectations, aspirations, diverse difficulties and the strategies they deploy to deal with these difficulties.

This book offers a range of perspectives and insights from around the world on the teaching and learning of listening, speaking, reading and writing. It brings together contributors from across six continents, who analyse a wide range of teaching and learning contexts, including primary, secondary, tertiary, private, and adult ESL/EFL classes. In doing so, they provide locally relevant accounts that nonetheless resonate with other contexts and wider concerns. This informative and practical edited collection will appeal to students and scholars who are interested in the four building blocks of language learning, as well as language education and teacher education.

Recent years have brought global expansion of private supplementary tutoring alongside regular school systems. This expansion has far-reaching implications for the nurturing of new generations, for social and economic development, and for the operation of school systems. Some dimensions are positive while other dimensions are problematic. Supplementary tutoring is especially visible in Asia. The formats of tutoring range from one-to-one provision to large classes. Some tutoring is provided by teachers and by specialist companies, while other tutoring is provided informally by university students and others. Using a comparative lens, this book examines possible government responses to the expansion of private supplementary tutoring. In general, the book suggests, the sector should be given more attention. The work shows wide diversity in the regulations introduced by governments in the Asian region. It notes not only that these governments can learn much from each other, but also that policy makers in other parts of the world can usefully look at patterns in Asia. The book also stresses the value of partnerships between governments, tutoring providers, schools, teachers' unions, and other bodies.