In the chapters that follow, the history and current status of early childhood education in selected countries, along with a review of current research that is being conducted in these countries will be presented. In essence this will provide a glimpse of the intellectual base of early childhood education in many parts of the world.

This handbook presents a timeless, comprehensive, and up-to-date resource covering major issues in the field of teacher education research. In a global landscape where migration, inequality, climate change, political upheavals and strife continue to be broadly manifest, governments and scholars alike are increasingly considering what role education systems can play in achieving stability and managed, sustainable economic development. With growing awareness that the quality of education is very closely related to the quality of teachers and teaching, teacher education has moved into a key position in international debate and discussion. This volume brings together transnational perspectives to provide insight and evidence of current policy and practice in the field, covering issues such as teacher supply, preservice education, continuing professional learning, leadership development, professionalism and identity, comparative and policy studies, as well as gender, equity, and social justice.

Governments urgently need better national information bases for determining educational policy and practice in an increasingly interconnected world. This report, from the first phase of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), presents a framework for improved international cooperation in improving the knowledge base for educational practice and policy formation. The information is based on CERI seminars and country reports from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The first chapter presents the statement of the problem and explains how the study was conducted. The second chapter examines some of the pervasive criticisms directed at educational research and describes some implications for research policy. An analysis of what the term "educational research and development" means is presented in the third chapter. Chapter 4 describes the current position of educational research in a group of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, using several indicators of research-and-development finance and staffing. Chapter 5 discusses how educational research relates to policy and practice and how this relationship might be improved. The sixth chapter considers what the knowledge base in education is and could be like. What are the interests of the various constituencies and how can these interests be better aligned? The last chapter presents a summary of the main challenges and describes the options for government policy. One figure and four tables are included. Appendices contain case studies of innovation in educational research and development (R&D), a list of subject interests from country reports, and a description of the methodology used in measuring indicators of educational R&D. Each chapter contains references. (LMI)

The book studies the origins and evolution of economic textbooks in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, up to the turning point represented by Paul Samuelson’s Economics (1948), which became the template for all the textbooks of the postwar period. The case studies included in the book cover a large part of Europe, the British Commonwealth, the United States and Japan. Each chapter examines various types of textbooks, from those aimed at self-education to those addressed to university students, secondary school students, to the short manuals aimed at the popularisation of political economy among workers and the middle classes. An introductory chapter examines this phenomenon in a comparative and transnational perspective.