This study explores the narrative evolution of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) higher education policy in the Philippines up to its present conceptions. This is done through qualitative methods, namely a policy analysis through the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), and semi-structured interviews with participants from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the Philippine National Commission for UNESCO (PH NATCOM), and a higher education institution (HEI). While the MSF is commonly used to explain policy change through moments of convergence, this study looks at non-convergence and the absence of a policy window in mainstreaming ESD in Philippine higher education governance. The policy analysis maps the problem, policy, and politics streams across time, grouping them into three distinct time periods: early (1977–1996), recent (2001–2010), and present (2011–2022). This study identifies a structural limitation of the MSF in executive-centred governance contexts, where political authority shapes both agenda-setting and institutional capacity that is required for coupling. It also provides empirical evidence of institutional decoupling in ESD governance, with international sustainability norms adopted discursively, but translated into domestic development priorities. Finally, this study demonstrates the value of a longitudinal, processual approach, highlighting how ESD policy is cumulative and shaped by factors outside of discrete concrete windows. These findings suggest the need to adapt the MSF for Global South contexts and provide an opportunity for comparative research across Southeast Asian contexts.
This paper engages Kuan-Hsing Chen’s Asia as Method as more than a strategy of epistemic reorientation or textual inter-referencing. It approaches Asia as Method as a ritual practice of refusal—one that unsettles the colonial-modern logics of mastery, order, and certainty embedded in educational research and the Schoolhouse of Modernity. While Asia as Method has powerfully challenged Eurocentric universalism, its scholarly uptake has often remained tethered to elite philosophical traditions and state-aligned forms of knowledge production. This paper asks what becomes possible when method itself is reimagined not as a technical apparatus or framework to be applied, but as a spell to be cast—or uncast. Drawing on decolonial, feminist, posthumanist, Taoist, Buddhist, and Indigenous thought, the paper reframes theory as ritual: an affective, relational, and performative practice that does not seek mastery or closure. It unfolds through three speculative spells—To Unmaster, To Refuse Order, and To Stay Uncertain—each interrupting a foundational assumption of modern educational research. These spells are not methods in the conventional sense, but gestures of unbinding that invite hesitation, opacity, and relational attunement. By approaching post–Asia as Method as a shift in the nature of theorizing itself, the paper offers practical implications for educational research and practice that value uncertainty, refusal, and relational knowing. Rather than proposing a new methodological toolkit, it invites readers to inhabit Asia as Method as an ongoing ritual of becoming otherwise.
This study examined the performance evaluation indicators for full-time faculty, focusing on education and student guidance practices across nine Regional National Universities in South Korea. Situated within the theoretical frameworks of new public management and audit culture, publicly available data from 2023, including school rules and regulations, were analyzed to construct a comparative framework suited to the Korean academic context. The analysis identified key similarities and differences in evaluation criteria, weighting structures, and regulatory policies. The findings reveal a significant structural bias toward quantitative metrics and institutional convergence, which can be interpreted as a manifestation of institutional isomorphism and the intensification of academic labor. These results lead to overlaps among education, research, administration, and service activities, potentially undermining the qualitative depth of faculty roles. Crucially, this study argues that such standardized, metric-heavy evaluation systems fail to capture the unique regional contributions of faculty, thereby threatening the long-term sustainability and specialized mission of regional higher education. The study underscores the urgent need for institutional reforms that move beyond metric-accountability to incorporate qualitative and region-specific performance indicators to ensure the adaptive resilience of universities in the era of academic capitalism.
Over the past decade, an increasing number of Chinese faculty members from non-double first-class universities and vocational colleges, particularly those working in social sciences, arts, and humanities, have pursued doctoral degrees in ASEAN developing countries. To investigate their decision-making process, we interviewed 20 such individuals and adopted Lin, Wang, and Shen’s (2024) Access-Experience-Outcome model as the analytical framework to guide the data analysis. The findings reveal that unlike self-directed student mobility, academic mobility embedded in career development operates on a different set of logic, which is characterized by instrumental demands and pragmatic benefits. A Demand-Perception-Benefit model is thus constructed to delineate the factors involved. Specifically, Chinese faculty members’ decisions of pursing doctoral degrees and selecting ASEAN as their study destination are shaped by three dimensions of factors—the demands for enhanced academic qualifications at governmental, institutional, and individual levels; the perceptions of host countries, institutions, and programs; and the anticipated benefits for themselves and their home institutions—and are often constrained by the dual pressure of economic and scholastic capital. Notably, while Chinese faculty members’ pursuit of doctoral degrees in ASEAN developing countries represents South-South academic mobility, it paradoxically reinforces the Western dominance in the global higher education landscape, underscoring the persistent education inequalities between the Global South and the Global North. We therefore call for more indigenous knowledge circulation between ASEAN and China to foster the development of a more inclusive, equitable, and multi-polar ecosystem for knowledge production.
This study explores counselors-in-training (CIT)’s perceptions of using ChatGPT as a virtual client for psychotherapy training. Specifically, it examines the perceived usefulness and challenges of ChatGPT in role-play sessions and investigates how these perceptions differ based on counseling self-efficacy. A case study approach was employed with 43 CITs in South Korea. Participants engaged in five AI-based psychotherapy training sessions using ChatGPT as a virtual client. Qualitative data were collected through written interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. Additionally, epistemic network analysis (ENA) was applied to compare perceptions based on counseling self-efficacy levels. Participants found ChatGPT useful for practicing psychotherapy, reducing anxiety, and receiving feedback. However, challenges included unrealistic client responses, difficulty in building rapport due to a lack of emotional expression, and technical issues. ENA results showed that those with high counseling self-efficacy focused on ChatGPT’s ability to simulate realistic clients, while those with low self-efficacy emphasized anxiety reduction and convenience. ChatGPT can be a valuable supplementary tool for psychotherapy training but has limitations in emotional expression and system stability. Enhancing AI’s human-like interaction and integrating it into immersive platforms may improve its effectiveness for training future psychotherapists.
Despite young people being the heirs of an increasingly multicultural world and the future of multicultural Singapore, there remains a lack of research on their perspectives on multiculturalism and multicultural issues. In an attempt to account for young people’s perspectives in the multiculturalism discourse, a qualitative research study is used in this paper to examine young people’s perspectives on multiculturalism and multicultural issues in the context of the National Education programme in Singapore via a critical-harmony multiculturalism perspective. Four key themes were surfaced in this study on young people’s perspectives on Singaporean multiculturalism. The first theme is a non-confrontational interracial interaction which is understood in terms of an educative approach and that of creating opportunities and spaces for interracial interaction. The second theme is that of a notion of the morally autonomous individual, built on a belief in discipling personal responsibility to address racism which was understood as an individual moral failing. The third theme pertains to maintaining the status quo of the perceived functional Singaporean multiculturalism and its prominent aspect: tolerance. The last theme touches on participants’ view that the school, as a safe space, has an untapped potential for deeper engagement beyond the current surface approach of multiracialism education. Underlying participants’ valuing of a non-confrontational social harmony is an internalised individualistically oriented idea of multiculturalism anchored on a notion of the morally autonomous individual that frames racism and multicultural issues primarily as individual moral failings which I argue is shaped by Singapore’s multiracialism education.
Postgraduate education is under increasing pressure to respond to expanding societal and professional demands shaped by labour market uncertainty, complex global problems, and rapid digital change. This conceptual paper focuses on postgraduate curriculum design in taught master’s programmes and structured doctoral training components, while excluding doctoral supervision practices as a primary focus. It argues that many postgraduate curricula still privilege disciplinary mastery and measurable performance, while critical agency, ethical judgement, and socially situated practice remain implicit or inconsistently assessed. Drawing on Barnett’s concept of critical being and Graham’s knowing becoming being framework, the paper proposes a curriculum-facing model that aligns critical inquiry with reflective identity formation and purposeful engagement in professional and societal contexts. Contemporary developments including artificial intelligence and digital tools, blended and flexible provision, lifelong learning and micro-credentials, and interdisciplinary learning are treated as curriculum design pressures rather than automatic improvements. These pressures create opportunities for access, responsiveness, and new forms of knowledge work, while also introducing risks related to academic integrity, inequity, and superficial credential accumulation. The framework is translated into curriculum implications through design principles that inform learning activities, assessment practices, and programme structures. It also identifies enabling conditions for implementation, including faculty development, workload recognition, and institutional reward systems that value pedagogical innovation. The paper contributes a theoretically grounded and operationally oriented framework that supports coherent alignment between postgraduate learning outcomes and the development of adaptable, reflective, ethically responsible, and socially engaged graduates in complex and uncertain environments.
This study investigates the transformative potential of translated texts as tools for intellectual resistance and pedagogical innovation within authoritarian academic systems, focusing on Iran’s political science departments. Employing a qualitative, interpretative approach grounded in a synthetic theoretical framework, the research draws on semi-structured interviews with professors and lecturers from leading Iranian universities. The analysis identifies “hidden cultural codes” embedded in translated English texts that educators strategically utilize to repoliticize depoliticized curricula, foster critical inquiry, and nurture democratic values. Findings reveal that these texts serve as valuable educational resources that promote analytical engagement while also acting as vehicles of intellectual resistance that challenge state-imposed ideological constraints. By embedding alternative narratives of political agency and civic participation, translated works transform classrooms into spaces of quiet subversion, enabling students to critically interrogate power structures. The study highlights the paradox of state-sanctioned translations, wherein officially approved materials become unintended instruments of critique. This research contributes to broader discussions on the intersection of translation, education, and resistance under authoritarian regimes, offering insights into how knowledge production can contest hegemonic control. It underscores the enduring capacity of critical scholarship to navigate restrictive environments and advocates for further exploration of similar dynamics in other constrained academic settings.
This study explores the impact of professional development (PD) on teacher entrepreneurial behaviors (TEB) in the context of Strategic Entrepreneurship Theory (SET). We conducted longitudinal surveys with 303 secondary teachers in Hong Kong. We analyzed four dimensions of TEB: advocating innovation, mobilizing resources, contriving cohesiveness, and mitigating risk. Our latent change score models showed that PD significantly improved teachers’ mobilization of resources, contriving cohesiveness, and mitigating risk, but it did not significantly affect innovation advocacy. This suggests an imbalance: PD readily builds advantage‑seeking behaviors but is less effective in shifting opportunity-seeking advocacy, which appears to rely more on institutional and leadership support. Overall, the research clarifies that PD primarily strengthens the infrastructure of entrepreneurial behavior rather than directly fostering innovation. Implications are discussed for PD design and for school leaders seeking to cultivate teachers’ entrepreneurial capacities. Future research can expand upon this study by exploring how PD interacts with broader organizational contexts to develop teachers’ full entrepreneurial potential.
South Korean government and universities have actively sought to attract international faculty members through various government-driven initiatives, leading to a rapid increase in international faculty members. However, Korean universities are consistently faced with international faculty retention issues, highlighting the need to examine measures that allow long-term sustainability of international faculty career trajectory in Korea. In this context, this study investigates the career development experiences of 22 international faculty members at four Korean research-focused universities through semi-structured interviews with specific focus on challenges and dilemmas. The findings reveal various career development challenges, including ambiguity in role expectations before arrival, stringent and misaligned evaluation standards, limited access to resources and mentoring support, and marginalization within the academic community. The study further identifies key dilemmas international faculty face, such as prioritizing short-term research productivity over long-term integration, relying on international networks over local ones, and negotiating the paradox of marginalization. Additionally, discipline-specific challenges regarding career success are particularly highlighted in the arts and humanities due to disparities between the local and global academic landscapes. The findings from this study contribute to the broader discourse on international academic career sustainability in semi-peripheral non-English-speaking country contexts.
Formative assessment is globally promoted to improve student learning, yet its integration into performative educational contexts remains challenging. In Mainland China, despite repeated calls for formative assessment reform, the outcomes have been far from optimistic. To broaden the global perspective on formative assessment, it is necessary to include the Chinese K–12 context, where the dominance of high-stakes examinations and traditional mindset presents a significant barrier to implementation. As part of a larger study, this article reports the qualitative findings of formative assessment literacy and practice from 17 K–12 teachers in Shanghai China. This study extends Pastore and Andrade’s (2019) Conceptual-Praxeological-Socio-emotional framework by illustrating how its three dimensions unfold within a performative, examination-driven educational system. The findings highlight the current limited and uneven professional development, partial and uncertain conceptions, formalistic practices, and cultural conditions shaped by hierarchy and examination pressure. Policy and professional development considerations for advancing formative assessment in Mainland China are discussed.
This cross-sectional study aimed to identify key predictors of academic performance and develop robust machine learning models for predicting cumulative grade point average (CGPA) among 3,639 undergraduate students at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Data on demographic characteristics, mental well-being, chronotype, physical activity, sedentary behavior, burnout, learning styles, motivation, personality traits, self-efficacy, and grit were collected using an online survey. Advanced feature selection techniques and various class imbalance handling methods were employed. Machine learning algorithms, including Random Forest, XGBoost, Logistic Regression, and a Stacking Ensemble, were evaluated. The XGBoost model with oversampling emerged as the best-performing model (F1-score: 73.1
Launched nationally in 2024, Indonesia’s Merdeka Curriculum (MC) marks a significant shift toward a more flexible, competency-based educational framework aimed at character development. This study aims to reveal the ideological underpinnings of the MC through a critical discourse analysis of curriculum documents, regulatory texts, and related public materials. Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse analysis model, we find a strong neoliberal influence upon the framing and orientation of the MC. Key elements of the MC, such as lifelong learning and the Pancasila Student Profile, which emphasizes the development of the values and skills essential for creating a workforce that is flexible and prepared for the market, reflect this ideology. Analysis also shows that the MC’s focus on accountability and standardization is consistent with the neoliberal ideology. These factors, however, run the risk of neglecting Indonesia’s particular geo-socio-cultural setting, which might worsen educational disparities and encourage the commercialisation of education. Therefore, it is important to carefully consider if a MC’s neoliberal ideology can successfully meet local educational demands.
In civic education, the sense of security brought into discussions informs how students engage with public issues and make decisions. This study foregrounds interpreted security as a critical force in shaping civic responsibility and collective identity. To explore how security is narrated and curated through educational practice, the research turns to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as a site where competing meanings of security intersect. Adopting environmental security as a connecting thread, this study examines how national, environmental, and human security are interwoven in the educational framing of the DMZ within its unique geopolitical and ecological context. By engaging with the DMZ in curriculum, this research discusses how security might be addressed beyond the boundaries of limited in-group interests to confront the shared insecurities of diverse lives and communities.
International student mobility (ISM) has become a central feature of higher education internationalisation, yet scholarship on ISM in Asia remains fragmented across regions, themes, and methodological traditions. This study offers a comprehensive bibliometric and critical synthesis of ISM research in Asia to map its intellectual structure, geographic concentration, theoretical orientations, and dominant thematic patterns. Drawing on 2,756 Scopus-indexed publications published between 1992 and 2025, the study integrates large-scale bibliometric techniques with qualitative interpretive analysis. The analysis examines publication trends, influential authors and journals, country-level collaboration networks, keyword co-occurrences, and 76 H-classics that define the field’s core knowledge base. The findings reveal rapid growth in ISM research in Asia since 2007, with a strong concentration in East Asia and continued dominance of Western scholarly influence. Research predominantly centres on student adjustment, adaptation, and well-being, often framed through push–pull models. Although linguistic and pedagogical dimensions are well represented in Asian scholarship, they are less visible within the most highly cited clusters and are not consistently integrated into analyses of institutional structures and policy regimes. Geographic and thematic biases reproduce global knowledge hierarchies, marginalising less visible Asian contexts and non-Anglophone mobility trajectories. By combining bibliometric mapping with critical interpretation, this study provides an Asia-centred understanding of ISM research and identifies priorities for future scholarship, including longitudinal, qualitative, and mixed-methods research that foregrounds student agency, contextual specificity, and epistemic equity.
Covid-19 turbocharged the adoption of digital technologies in mainstream schools, which necessarily changed the shape of private supplementary tutoring as well. This article traces these dynamics in Cambodia, outlining the concept of Do It Yourself (DIY) Tutoring. DIY Tutoring is curriculum-linked learning outside of the classroom that a student engages with autonomously through digital platforms. The digital nature of DIY Tutoring allows for a level of flexibility and personalization uncommon in other forms of self-guided tutoring. Most importantly, DIY Tutoring alters the traditional understanding of the cost of tutoring from direct user-fees to also include indirect fees common in platform capitalism. The article reports on empirical evidence in Cambodia to articulate a framework of DIY Tutoring. Although this study focuses on Cambodia, adding to the literature on shadow education in the country, the concept of DIY Tutoring can be applied more widely, opening new directions in shadow education research.
Compassion education is attracting growing attention across neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Many programs—especially in the United States—adopt brain-based models rooted in neuroplasticity and mindfulness. However, Western approaches are not monolithic; some frame compassion as a civic and moral virtue. A few programs also draw on Tibetan Buddhist traditions, though the dominant trend remains empirical and psychological. This paper argues that when treated as self-sufficient, science-based models risk narrowing compassion to what is measurable and rest on unexamined assumptions about human nature and education. Drawing on critiques of scientific naturalism, Mahayana Buddhist thought, and Ohashi Ryosuke’s phenomenology, this paper proposes an integrative framework that foregrounds relational accounts of flourishing and challenges mind/body and subject/object dualisms. Methodologically, the paper (1) outlines a Buddhist account of compassion as interdependence and situates it cross-culturally; (2) examines UNESCO MGIEP’s LIBRE programme as a case study; (3) interrogates the Western “brain = mind” assumption and its reductionist limitations; and (4) advances a complementary framework based on Ohashi and Mahayana Buddhism. Rather than positing an East–West dichotomy, the analysis invites sustained dialogue between neuroscience and philosophy to broaden the aims and practices of compassion education.
This study introduces the concept of education arbitrage—the tactical pursuit of academic capital across asymmetric fields of cost, access, and recognition—to theorize South–South student mobility among Chinese learners. Drawing on a longitudinal study of 42 students in Southeast Asia (2021–2024), we trace their trajectories across decision-making, academic sojourn, and post-graduation transitions. Findings show that Southeast Asian institutions are rarely first-choice destinations but function as contingent alternatives when access to more prestigious systems is blocked. Initially framed as pragmatic optimization, arbitrage often unravels through unexpected academic rigor, cultural dissonance, emotional strain, and financial miscalculations. Post-study, students experience layered devaluation via economic exclusion, institutional arbitrariness, and symbolic violence. These dynamics reveal the fragility of arbitrage and its tendency to reproduce global educational stratification. By theorizing education arbitrage as a multi-actor, multi-scalar circuitry of power that mediates policy asymmetries, institutional dynamics, and social imaginaries, this study advances a critical framework for understanding how international student mobility simultaneously enables and constrains peripheral integration in a hierarchized global system.
This study explored how gifted high school students perceived their academic self-concept and future college major intentions in schools where homogeneous grouping was implemented full-time throughout the academic year. Using survey responses from 389 gifted high school students, major findings included that mostly, the gifted students maintained favorable perceptions about their scholastic ability and considerations of college majors in STEM. Their academic self-concept significantly differed across the four latent profiles, whereas intentions to change college majors did not show statistically significant differences. The highest academic self-concept was found for the group with high levels of the need for cognition, mastery goal orientation, and resilience. In contrast, the lowest group was characterized by low need for cognition, low performance but high mastery goal orientations, and a minimal social comparison tendency. There were some profiles less likely to belong to male than female students. Even within an ostensibly homogeneous setting, gifted students would exhibit heterogeneous psychological configurations which shape qualitatively distinct psychological and learning experiences. Identifying gifted students’ needs and profiles is one mode to better understand what makes homogeneous settings effective for the gifted and serve them better to fulfill their giftedness and talent.
