Reforming Learning And Teaching In Asia Pacific Universities

This book focuses on learning and teaching as the core business of higher education and explores reformative efforts in response to the influences of globalised processes in three advanced economies in the Asia-Pacific region: Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. This is a significant book as it adds to limited discussions on the globalisation of learning debates, and scholarly reflections on the links between globalised processes and changing educational practices, critical to understanding the current challenges and options available for charting future development for universities in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. It rejects an essentialising perspective that considers changes as inevitable and uniform. Instead it considers negotiations, arguments, and even resistance as competing forces and integral components of the process of reforming pedagogical practices in Asia-Pacific universities. This book discusses globalised processes as a new context for reforming learning and teaching and its focused discussions cover topics including meeting the needs of new student groups, new technological practices for change, use of English as an international language, and challenges in assessment and quality assurance.

In the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, various reform initiatives, policies and programmes have been carried out in different countries within the Asia-Pacific region. All these reform efforts aim to restructure different aspects of schooling in order to promote learning and to prepare students for future challenges in globalised economies. These measures to a certain extent challenge traditional practices, established arrangements and deep-seated assumptions related to different aspects of learning. The authors in this book discuss educational reforms in different countries in the Asia-Pacific region in light of student learning, clarify their concepts, evaluate implementation and impact on the learning processes, with a hope that we can learn better from each other and develop a better understanding of "contemporary" learning and teaching processes within the region. The central argument running through different chapters in this book highlights the importance of understanding reforms and learning within their historical, political and sociocultural contexts. Reforming learning involves changes in established cultural practices in our schools, classrooms, and other learning sites, and therefore inevitably arouses tensions and negotiations. The discussion in this book puts to the fore the disputable nature of reforming learning and the significance of contextualising the complex relationship between reforms and learning.

In facing the challenges of rapid globalization, IT intensification, international competition and local demands for developments, educators, scholars and leaders in the Asia-Pacific region and other parts of the world are concerned with reforms of teacher education for the future of education in the new millennium. This edited volume aims to provide a global sharing of the major trends and characteristics of the ongoing teacher education reforms in this region and the major challenges and issues raised in policy formulation and reform implementation. With a total of 14 chapters prepared by 18 scholars from nine educational systems – Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and United States – in the Asia-Pacific region, the book highlights the trends and challenges in the reform of teacher education in the region generally and in eight educational systems in particular. Most chapters directly or indirectly address the latest issues of teacher education and development at operational, site, and macro levels from a national or regional perspective. This volume is of interest to teachers, teacher educators, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders in all developed and developing countries.

Examining how the increasingly interdependent economic system has driven policy change and education reform, Ka Ho Mok assesses the impact of globalization on the education systems of key East Asian countries, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, and the "tiger economies" of South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

"This book addresses issues surrounding the development of International Baccalaureate and associated curricula in the Asia-Pacific region"--

This book investigates the relationships between education and national development in an area of the world where both have acquired considerable importance. It questions assumptions which view education primarily as a direct investment in human capital and approaches which measure the efficacy of educational provision solely in terms of quantifiable differences between inputs and outputs. Unlike most of the more general works in this field, it does not set out either to confirm or to refute a particular theory. Instead, the main perspectives which have been adopted to explain the role of education in development are explored. The role of education in the development of eight societies in East Asia, including Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Macau, and the People's Republic of China, is examined. These societies are compared in order to highlight the diverse and complex role played by education in their development.

This book deepens readers’ conceptual understanding of and provides practical insights into Vietnam’s higher education reforms. Globalisation has had profound impacts on higher education worldwide, creating transnational linkages and junctures, as well as disjunctures. At the same time, it has generated fluidities, hybridities and mobilities. Within the postcolonial context of Vietnam, it is imperative to identify the unique global traits that characterise the Vietnamese higher education system. The book focuses specifically on key aspects of culture and values that are decisive to the reform of Vietnamese higher education under the forces of globalisation. It critically examines how global forces have shaped and reshaped Vietnam’s higher education landscape. At the same time, the book explores local demands on Vietnamese higher education, and deciphers how higher education institutions are responding to globalisation, internationalisation and local demands. Based on empirical research, theoretical approaches and the experiences of researchers from Vietnam and overseas, it addresses critical perspectives on the aspects fundamental to the reform of Vietnamese higher education and outlines viable paths for the future.

Since the turn of the millennium it has become clear that the Asia-Pacific Region is, economically, the fastest growing continent in the world, and is likely to remain so for some time despite the setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Asia-Pacific's share of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) doubled from 15 per cent to 30 per cent between 1970 and 2017 and is projected to account for half of global GDP by 2050. With South East and South Asia also growing rapidly, with over half the world's population and three of the world's five largest economies, Asia is soon poised to home half of the world's middle class - a class that is both the driver and the product of higher education. The quality of a country's system of higher education may be seen both as a gauge of its current level of national development as well as of its future economic prospects. It is therefore natural that the putative "Asian Century" should generate interest in the region's higher education systems which, on the one hand, share common characteristics-a fixation with credentials and engineering, high technology (especially among male students), and business degrees-while at the same time are also highly differentiated, not only across countries but also within. As such, a better understanding of higher education achievements, failings, potential, and structural limitations in the Asia-Pacific Region is imperative. This handbook presents a number of significant country case-studies and documents cross-cutting trends relating to, among other things: the trilemma faced by governments juggling competing claims of access, accessible cost, and quality; the balance between teaching and research; the links between labour markets (demand) and higher education (supply); preferred fields of study and their consequences; the rise of the research university in Asia; the lure of institutions of international reputation within the region; new education technologies and their effects; and, trends in government policy within the wider region and sub-regions.