The following post was originally published by the Asia Pacific Memo on February 18, 2014.
Memo #271
Featuring Julian Dierkes
Recently, Ee-Seul Yoon of the Faculty of Education at UBC in coordination with the Asia Pacific Memo sat down with Dr. Julian Dierkes, Associate Professor and Keidanren Chair in Japanese Research at UBC’s Institute for Asian Research, to pose a few questions about Professor Dierkes’ recently co-edited volume, Out of the Shadows: The Global Intensification Of Supplementary Education, which was published in December 2013.
In our discussion, Dr. Dierkes presents an overview of the changing status and burgeoning popularity of supplementary education (that is, informal education received outside the traditional classroom) and what ramifications this is having on students, teachers, parents, education policy, and the political process—in Canada, Japan, Asia and even more globally. Finally, he touches upon how supplementary education itself is evolving as well as the present status of academic interest in the phenomenon of informal education.
Julian Dierkes is an Associate Professor and the Keidanren Chair in Japanese Research at the Institute for Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, where his research interests are in the area of comparative political sociology and the sociology of education.
Links
Janice Aurini, Scott Davies, and Julian Dierkes, Out of the Shadows: The Global Intensification Of Supplementary Education (Emerald, 2013)
Jukupedia, “Shadowing Education,” February 2014
Julian Dierkes, “Is South Korea’s Hyper-Education System the Future?,” Asia Pacific Memo #2
Husaina Kenayathulla, “Private Tutoring in Malaysia: Regulating for Quality,” Asia Pacific Memo #126
International Education News 
Canada
Ferlazzo, L. Education Week (21 May 2012 & 22 May 2012)
What’s going on in Ontario’s schools? Part One contains responses to this question from a teacher, an administrator, and two parent leaders; Part Two includes contributions from Professor Michael Fullan, a professor emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and current special advisor to the premier and minister of education in Ontario, and readers. Professor Fullan writes, “Unfortunately some countries in a hurry to address the issues get the solutions wrong. I call these mistake ‘wrong drivers for whole system reform’. Drivers are policy and strategy instruments designed to ’cause’ improvement in the system. A wrong driver is one that does not work; a right driver is one that does produce improvement. In our work on system reform we have been sorting out what drivers work and which ones do not. This is our conclusion: excessive accountability, individualistic strategies designed to increase human capital, technology and ad hoc policy solutions waste valuable time and resources and often make matters worse.” Other respondents point to support for teachers and involving students in the creation of assessments as reasons for the success of Ontario schools.
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Posted in Opinion/Commentary, Videos
Tagged Canada, Ontario, PISA