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This book gathers in one volume all the information needed to use ADePT Edu, the software platform created by the World Bank for the reporting and analysis of education indicators and education inequality. It includes a primer on education data availability, an operating manual for the software, a technical explanation of all the education indicators generated, and an overview of global education inequality using ADePT Edu. The World Bank developed ADePT Edu to fill the need for a user-friendly program designed to give everyone the ability to organize and analyze education data from households. ADePT Edu can be used with any household survey with the aid of its user friendly interface, generating education tables and graphics that comply with international standards for performance indicators. Because this volume is a compendium its chapters can be consulted independently of each other, depending on the need of users.

Socio-political, environmental, cultural, and digital changes require literacies that will be crucial for facing complex challenges. This article contributes to a notion of digital literacies as agentic and transformative and having epistemological implications. Although studies in digital literacies have examined diverse forms of understanding and relating to digitalization, we find that few studies have adopted a principled approach to transformative enactment of digital literacies. Our analytic focus is on how agents turn to digital (and other) resources when faced with problems in order to make them manageable. We conceptualize this notion of digital literacies by drawing on the Vygotskian principle of double stimulation. To demonstrate how agentic and transformative literacies appear in technology-rich learning environments, we make use of an empirical setting in which lower secondary school students and their teacher face a conundrum in a science project. We use this case as an empirical carrier of the conceptual and analytical framework employed. The analysis shows how the teacher enacts digital literacies in the design and orchestration of student activities in technology-rich learning environments where unforeseen issues occur, and how the collaborating students enact digital literacies by drawing on resources that enable them to resolve their insufficient understanding of a problem to reach insights that are shared with their peers.

This paper summarizes the experiences to date of the new EU countries (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia—the EU8) in the reform of higher education systems in a period of growing demand; changing patterns of access; rapid expansion and increased participation rates; and an apparent dilution of average quality. The study discusses the growing experience with a variety of financing mechanisms in EU8 countries, drawing on detailed country case studies, and seeks to develop some useful lessons from experience, mindful that each country will continue to develop its own solution based on national priorities.

Sustainable architectural education is offered in colleges and universities all over the world. Studies have emphasized the importance of sustainable architectural education in introductory courses of architecture major programs, but methods and strategies for teaching sustainable architecture at lower levels are scarce. This study focuses on the design-to-physical-construction process and creates a teaching framework that incorporates the concept of sustainable development from the perspectives of sustainable economy, environment and society. Based on the teaching method of learning through the design-to-physical-construction process and referring to the grounded theory, a case study on a bamboo construction project was conducted to explore approaches and strategies of sustainable architectural education in introductory courses. Results reveal that five systems, including the system of sustainable development, consist of a framework that illustrated the teaching effects. Based on the framework, we discovered five factors that should be considered in incorporating the concept of sustainable development into architectural design teaching, including the necessity of conducting sustainable architectural education in introductory courses. This study helps explore the potential role sustainability plays in incorporating interdisciplinary knowledge, connecting specialized knowledge across different program levels, and motivating student learning. It also provides a reference for the practice of sustainable architectural education.

Although China has witnessed the rapid growth of public administration (PA) education during recent decades, few studies have focused on the practical issues of lower-level tertiary PA education, namely, PA programs in vocational colleges. The methods that vocational PA programs can apply to improve educational quality are a theoretical gap since vocational PA education differs from university PA education. This article introduces the background and summarizes the characteristics and problems of vocational PA education. Based on the authors’ experience and the application of the Degree Qualifications Profile from other vocational programs, this article proposes a new method for comprehensively developing a curriculum. This method acts as a guideline and helps resolve the uncertainty of vocational PA programs.

The paper highlights that the education of children, and youth merits the highest priority in a world afflicted by HIV/AIDS, specifically because a good basic education ranks among the most effective - and cost-effective - means of HIV prevention. It also merits priority because the very education system that supplies a nation ' s future, is being greatly threatened by the epidemic, particularly in areas of high, or rising HIV prevalence. The paper confronts the destructive power of the epidemic, with the need to accelerate efforts towards achieving \" education for all \" goals, aiming at prioritizing education, because education is a major engine of economic, and social development, and, because education is a proven means to prevent HIV/AIDS. It aims at setting promising directions for such responsiveness, as revealed by a review of country experience to date: based on strategic planning in pursuit of educational goals, school-based prevention programs, and health education, focused on resources for effective school health (in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children ' s Fund (UNICEF), and the Bank, should expand skills-based for youth peer education, and support for orphans. The broad principles of Bank support for education, underline the need to asses the impact of the epidemic vs. educational systems, to mobilize resources, reinforced by government commitments for sharing knowledge, and building capacity, within strategic partnerships.

The informal sector of Sub-Saharan Africa is comprised of small and household enterprises that operate in the non-farm sector outside the protected employment of the formal wage sector. The sector was identified 40 years ago by the ILO representing a pool of surplus labor that was expected to be absorbed by future industrialization, but rather than gradually disappearing, it has become a persistent feature of the region’s economic landscape accounting for a majority of jobs created off the farm. Acknowledging its potential as a source of employment for the region’s expanding workforce and improving its productivity and earnings is recognized as a priority for poverty reduction. This study examines the role played by education and skills development in achieving this objective.Until now, few studies have used household labor force surveys to capture the skills profile of the informal sector and study how different means of skills development - formal education, technical and vocational education and training, apprenticeships, and learning on the job -- shape productivity and earnings in the informal sector as compared with the formal wage sector. This study uses household labor force surveys to look at the experience of skills development in five African countries - Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Tanzania - that together account for one-third of the nearly 900 million persons living in SSA. The study defines the non-farm informal sector as the self-employed (own account and with workers), contributing family members, and wage workers in small and household enterprises.Of the nearly 36 million working off the farm in the five countries, 7 out of 10 are working in the informal sector. The importance of this study is its quantitative assessment of how different sources of skills development are related to the sector in which one works and the earnings received in that sector. It further highlights a set of economic constraints to acquiring skills in the small and household enterprises of the informal sector that will have to be overcome if skills are to become a means for improving productivity and earnings in this sector. The study offers a comprehensive strategy for improving employment outcomes in the informal sector through skills development with examples of successful interventions taken from international experience and the five countries.

It starts with a demand-side analysis in chapter two, examining historical trends in demand for skills, revealing the types of skills in demand, and projecting future demand for skills driven by economic growth and policy development. Chapter two also highlights the emerging skills shortages and mismatches in Yunnan. The rest of the report focuses on the access, quality, and relevance of Yunnan's education and training system and how effective it is in supplying the skills in demand. An overview of Yunnan's formal and non-formal education and training system is presented in chapter three. Chapter four focuses on the formal Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system, examining its governance, industry participation, curriculum reforms, quality assurance, and finances. Analysis of the formal education and training system focuses mainly on secondary and tertiary TVET. Chapters five and six address two major training programs outside the formal education system: non-formal training for rural workers and work-based training for urban workers, both of strategic importance. Finally, chapter seven draws on lessons from the Shanghai Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA to demonstrate the role of schools in developing the cognitive skills of 15-year-olds. The report concludes with a summary of findings and a set of policy recommendations for meeting the skills challenges and improving the education and training system.

Based on twenty-five years of fieldwork, Rural Women's Sexuality, Reproductive Health, and Illiteracy: A Critical Perspective on Development examines rural women's behaviors towards health in several developing countries.These women are confronted with many factors: gender inequalities, violence from partners, and lack of economic independence.

Introduction - International trends influencing secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa - Issues of governance in secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa - Management of secondary education: focus on the school - Accountability - The governance and accountability of private schools - Special issue: addressing ICT and technical training - Recommendations.