| Research Abstract |
The project aimed at finding the patterns and trends of the educational policies and strategies of Asian countries having been taken to responding and trying to overcome their economic difficulties hit especially after the plunge of financial crisis in Thailand in 1997. The study included the analysis of the documents, statistics and data collected from the countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Bhutan, Brunei, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Under this fund, visits to the schools, institutions and Educational Ministries were made to Dhaka, Bangladesh in November 2000, and to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam in August 2001. Similar data were gathered by the visits under other funds from Malaysia, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, China and Brunei during the same period of this project. Interviews to officials and academics provided me with rich expertise and opinions to construct the framework to analyze the global trends and local differences.
In the field of school curriculum, po
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licy emphasis seemed to have been put on two main subjects, namely advanced technological education and values teaching. In some countries Ministries are to introduce independent subject of Technology and/or separate Science/Technology streams in the curriculum of junior or senior secondary level of education. They also are trying to intensify the role of subjects to teach traditional and national values and virtues as a response to the break down of the national border of information.
The research results suggested that the difference in outcomes from these policies may be related to the level of educational development and population size of the countries. Countries with lower educational development or enrolment ratio tend to have problem because the technology education and streaming are only available in the secondary and tertiary level to which less students can survive by the high dropout in these countries. Small countries like Bhutan or Brunei have another problem of the unlimited influx of information and foreign elements that may affect the decline of moral standard of youth. The values education could be the another choice of prescription to tackle the global impact of economies. Less
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