FIRE, Volume 03, Issue 03 (2016)

Special thanks to Christy Kelsey Zigler for her guidance and feedback on the statistical models and results. Thank you to the Student Research Grant of the School of Education, University of Pittsburgh, part of which supported this study. This publication represents only the views of the author; any errors are only her own.

This quantitative study examines the effectiveness of government financial assistance policies in access to higher education in post-socialist Mongolia as of 2012, using probabilistic, cross-sectional Household Social and Economic Survey data. Using a six-subscale composite socioeconomic status (SES) variable, the study examines the effect of SES on government financial assistance, relationship between the State Budget Organization employee status on the assistance and the SES levels. Cross tabulations and multinomial regression models were applied in the analyses.

Using two rounds in 2003 and 2013 of large sample longitudinal surveys of science teachers in primary schools from 21 provinces and autonomous regions of China, results suggest that Chinese teachers' basic scientific literacy was still low with only a slight increase in the procedural knowledge of science. The evidence also suggests little increase in epistemological knowledge of science among teachers, especially concerning with the classic nature of science. Chinese teachers' non-scientific teaching behavior remained unchanged.

There has been limited research focusing on the place of culture and resulting teaching and learning identities in EFL and how these issues impact on EFL policy, curriculum and enacted curriculum, especially textbooks. Even less research has focussed on these issues in the Gulf context. Some international research has explored the role of culture and geopolitical factors affecting EFL policies in the world.

Many social issues exist for marginalized youth in the New Territories of Hong Kong, despite Hong Kong's high standard of living. Increasingly, attention is being paid to social mobility of Hong Kong's younger generations. Youth in the New Territories face academic, economic, social and cultural barriers, in part due to tracking into low-ranked Band 3 schools. In order to better understand these barriers, this study took a phenomenological approach to understanding selected youth's perceptions and perspectives on these barriers.

This study explores why nomadic children in the counties of Turkana and West Pokot are left behind in the primary education process despite free primary education (FPE), and considers the variables that contribute to high dropout rates, low enrollment, poor attendance, and unsatisfactory academic achievement with a view of bringing out possible strategies to mitigate against these factors of discontinuity. Based on a study conducted in two counties in Kenya, results suggest that formal education in Kenya has not effectively served the nomadic communities.

<strong>BOOK REVIEW: <strong>Thompson, C. (2013). Leadership Re-imagination: A Primer of Principles and Practices (Kindle DX version). Kingston, Jamaica: The Caribbean Leadership Re-Imagination Initiative.</strong></strong>

Research about innovation adoption underplays the role of educational attainment in the individual consumption of technology; consequently, past research underestimates the importance education plays independent of wealth in diffusion, particularly as absolute levels of formal education rise worldwide. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study employs clustered logistic regression to show how educational attainment of adults independently relates to household Internet adoption, net of wealth and other social factors.