An International Comparison of Educational Systems: the Columbian, Iraqi and Kurdish cases

As developing countries aim to improve their education to address the challenges of globalisation's economic and social demands, comparative education can provide references for reforms and changes. Through studying the educational systems of other countries, we can discover which reforms are possible and desirable. This article attempts to demonstrate some specific aspects of the educational systems of Columbia, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan and to compare them. It shows the decentralisation process and challenges of the systems. It also reveals the structure of education of the three systems and their differences related to duration and organisation of primary and secondary schools. Following that, the curriculum provision and their orientations are explained. Finally, the article also tries to find the differences in teacher training in terms of duration and training types, occurring before / during service. The obtained results show that the decentralisation process and its challenges are very similar in these educational systems while there are differences in the duration, structure, and curriculum subjects.

Stirrings, 1945–74

This chapter covers the period from 1945 to 1974, a period of significant social and cultural modernisation in Scotland and, from the mid-1960s onwards, renewed campaigning energy on behalf of Gaelic. Inspired by their counterparts in Wales, An Comunn Gaidhealach and other activists pressed for greater official recognition of Gaelic and the government began to accept responsibility concerning the language, making direct funding to Gaelic organisations. Official policies towards Gaelic in education slowly became more favourable and there were pioneering measures to increase the use of Gaelic in the curriculum. Provision for Gaelic television began, although only on a small scale, and Gaelic began to be represented on road and street signs.

Exploring Preparation of Pre-Service Teachers’ English Proficiency and Pedagogy: Stories from an EFL Teacher Education Program

Many English teachers today are non-native speakers of English graduating from Pre-service English Teacher Education (PETE) programs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. They undertake their teaching career in a strategic but challenging linguistic and educational situation. This paper reports findings from such a situation based on a qualitative case study of a PETE program at an Indonesian university that aimed to explore the nature of curriculum provision in preparation to develop pre-service teachers’ English proficiency and pedagogy. Data were collected from pre-service teachers, teacher educators, and program administrator using interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations. Results of data analyses revealed a nature of curriculum provision that is inadequately supportive in preparing pre-service teachers’ English proficiency and pedagogy. It is represented in three emerging themes: inadequacy of English proficiency in learning to teach English, lack of balance between theory and practice, and inadequate facilitation for contextual and integrated learning experience.

A Study on Computer Teaching Based on Computational Thinking

The concept of computational thinking has caused wide public concern over the world. How to cultivate students’ computational thinking and creative ability becomes a common question. This paper proposes some suggestions about the curriculum provision of theory courses and experimental teaching of computer science and technology.