This book summarises what OECD has to say about the state of education today in eight key areas: early childhood education, schooling, transitions beyond initial education, higher education, adult learning, outcomes and returns, equity, and innovation.

What does the OECD have to say about the state of education today? What are the main OECD messages on early childhood education, teacher policies and tertiary education? What about student performance, educational spending and equity in education? OECD work on these important education topics and others have been brought together in a single accessible source. Organised into eight chapters, this report examines early childhood education, schooling, transitions beyond initial education, higher education, adult learning, outcomes and returns, equity, and innovation. The chapters are structured around key findings and policy directions emerging from recent OECD educational analyses. Each entry highlights the main message in a concise and accessible way, with a brief explanation and reference to the original OECD source. This report will prove to be an invaluable resource for all those interested in the broad international picture of education, as well as for those wanting to know more about OECD work in this important domain. Contents Chapter 1. Early childhood education and care Chapter 2. Schooling: Investments, organisation and learners Chapter 3. Transitions beyond initial education Chapter 4. Higher education Chapter 5. Lifelong learning and adults Chapter 6. Outcomes, benefits and returns Chapter 7. Equity and equality of opportunity Chapter 8. Innovation and knowledge management

Despite great progress around the world in getting more kids into schools, too many leave without even the most basic skills. In India’s rural Andhra Pradesh, for instance, only about one in twenty children in fifth grade can perform basic arithmetic. The problem is that schooling is not the same as learning. In The Rebirth of Education, Lant Pritchett uses two metaphors from nature to explain why. The first draws on Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom’s book about the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations, The Starfish and the Spider. Schools systems tend be centralized and suffer from the limitations inherent in top-down designs. The second metaphor is the concept of isomorphic mimicry. Pritchett argues that many developing countries superficially imitate systems that were successful in other nations— much as a nonpoisonous snake mimics the look of a poisonous one. Pritchett argues that the solution is to allow functional systems to evolve locally out of an environment pressured for success. Such an ecosystem needs to be open to variety and experimentation, locally operated, and flexibly financed. The only main cost is ceding control; the reward would be the rebirth of education suited for today’s world.

A sweeping assessment of the state of higher education today from former Harvard president Derek Bok Higher Education in America is a landmark work--a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the current condition of our colleges and universities from former Harvard president Derek Bok, one of the nation's most respected education experts. Sweepingly ambitious in scope, this is a deeply informed and balanced assessment of the many strengths as well as the weaknesses of American higher education today. At a time when colleges and universities have never been more important to the lives and opportunities of students or to the progress and prosperity of the nation, Bok provides a thorough examination of the entire system, public and private, from community colleges and small liberal arts colleges to great universities with their research programs and their medical, law, and business schools. Drawing on the most reliable studies and data, he determines which criticisms of higher education are unfounded or exaggerated, which are issues of genuine concern, and what can be done to improve matters. Some of the subjects considered are long-standing, such as debates over the undergraduate curriculum and concerns over rising college costs. Others are more recent, such as the rise of for-profit institutions and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Additional topics include the quality of undergraduate education, the stagnating levels of college graduation, the problems of university governance, the strengths and weaknesses of graduate and professional education, the environment for research, and the benefits and drawbacks of the pervasive competition among American colleges and universities. Offering a rare survey and evaluation of American higher education as a whole, this book provides a solid basis for a fresh public discussion about what the system is doing right, what it needs to do better, and how the next quarter century could be made a period of progress rather than decline.

Physical inactivity is a key determinant of health across the lifespan. A lack of activity increases the risk of heart disease, colon and breast cancer, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, osteoporosis, anxiety and depression and others diseases. Emerging literature has suggested that in terms of mortality, the global population health burden of physical inactivity approaches that of cigarette smoking. The prevalence and substantial disease risk associated with physical inactivity has been described as a pandemic. The prevalence, health impact, and evidence of changeability all have resulted in calls for action to increase physical activity across the lifespan. In response to the need to find ways to make physical activity a health priority for youth, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment was formed. Its purpose was to review the current status of physical activity and physical education in the school environment, including before, during, and after school, and examine the influences of physical activity and physical education on the short and long term physical, cognitive and brain, and psychosocial health and development of children and adolescents. Educating the Student Body makes recommendations about approaches for strengthening and improving programs and policies for physical activity and physical education in the school environment. This report lays out a set of guiding principles to guide its work on these tasks. These included: recognizing the benefits of instilling life-long physical activity habits in children; the value of using systems thinking in improving physical activity and physical education in the school environment; the recognition of current disparities in opportunities and the need to achieve equity in physical activity and physical education; the importance of considering all types of school environments; the need to take into consideration the diversity of students as recommendations are developed. This report will be of interest to local and national policymakers, school officials, teachers, and the education community, researchers, professional organizations, and parents interested in physical activity, physical education, and health for school-aged children and adolescents.

How can countries prepare teachers to face the diverse challenges in today's schools? The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) helps answer this question by asking teachers and school leaders about their working conditions and the learning environments at their schools. TALIS aims to provide valid, timely and comparable information to help countries review and define policies for developing a high-quality teaching profession. It is an opportunity for teachers and school leaders to provide input into educational policy analysis and development in key areas. This report presents the results of the second cycle of the TALIS survey conducted in 2013.

Educators, professionalism and politics offers ways of understanding how and with what consequences national systems of education and the work of education professionals are being reregulated in the context of contemporary global transitions. Globalization does not just create transnational organizations, relations and practices; it also transforms nation-states by creating more complex education spaces that impinge on the work of educators and the learning that they enable, globally, nationally and locally. This volume of the World Yearbook of Education focuses firmly on the educators themselves. It documents the way educators encounter and renegotiate ideas and practices that travel globally as they seek to enact their established professional projects. This framing recognises that educators’ spaces, work and identities are historically anchored in national institutional trajectories, but are both disturbed and renewed as globally mobile ideas and practices "touch down" within national systems of education. The chapters examine the effect of global transitions on educators and education, and offers new perspectives on educational work in different parts of the world today. They challenge bleak assessments of teacher de-professionalization and idealistic narratives about professional development. Chapters highlight the significance of educators’ occupational boundary work and the resources and networks they mobilize through their professional projects as they make and remake education in national spaces. The volume tracks: Re-regulatory trajectories evident in national education spaces and their impact on educators; The way educators renegotiate globally mobile ideas, practices and national institutional trajectories, as they mediate global formations emerging in the national space; and The kinds of mediations and resources that enable education professionals to engage with the politics of professionalization. This volume of The World Yearbook of Education will be of great interest to Education researchers, graduate students, teacher educators and education policy-makers. Terri Seddon is Professor of Education at Monash University, Australia Jenny Ozga is Professor of the Sociology of Education at Oxford University, UK John Levin is Bank of America Professor of Education Leadership and Director, California Community College Collaborative, University of California, USA

2013 International Conference on Advanced Education Technology and Management Science(AETMS2013) aims to provide a forum for accessing to the most up-to-date and authoritative knowledge from both Education Technology and Management Science. AETMS2013 features unique mixed topics of Education technology, Teaching theory, psychology, Sport Pedagogy, Management science and engineering, Finance and economics and so on. The goal of this conference is to bring researchers, engineers, and students to the areas of Education Technology and Management Science to share experiences and original research contributions on those topics.

Complete proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies ECRM 2013 PRINT version Published by Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited.

While the achievement gap has dominated policy discussions over the past two decades, relatively little attention has been paid to a gap even more at odds with American ideals: the opportunity gap. Opportunity and achievement, while inextricably connected, are very different goals. Every American will not go to college, but every American should be given a fair chance to be prepared for college. In communities across the U.S., children lack the crucial resources and opportunities, inside and outside of schools that they need if they are to reach their potential. Closing the Opportunity Gap offers accessible, research-based essays written by top experts who highlight the discrepancies that exist in our public schools, focusing on how policy decisions and life circumstances conspire to create the "opportunity gap" that leads inexorably to stark achievement gaps. They also describe sensible policies grounded in evidence that can restore and enhance opportunities. Moving beyond conventional academic discourse, Closing the Opportunity Gap will spark vital new conversations about what schools, parents, educators, and policymakers can and should do to give all children a fair chance to thrive.