An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the role of basic education in recovery of post-conflict situations, evidences on the impact of National Qualifications Frameworks, and the differences in music curriculum in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
[Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2013.777508]

This article is primarily designed to provide a cultural analysis of the literature on achievement goals. First, an overview of the four dominant approaches to the study of culture-namely, cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, indigenous psychology, and psychological anthropology-is offered. Second, we analyze the extant body of research on achievement goals according to the three metatheoretical orientations of absolutism, relativism, and universalism and argue that cultural research on motivation should adopt a universalist approach as it is most consistent with a motivational science perspective. Finally, we conclude with concrete recommendations for how future research on culture and motivation should proceed in light of a universalistic perspective.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2011.614526]

The paper focuses on the close collaborative work our research team has been engaged in with two local schools to study how action research measures may help to facilitate the improvement of the Integrated Humanities (IH) curriculum through school-university partnerships. It attempts to understand action research as a form of cultural practice for education, and examines how such collaborative work with local schools may contribute to sustainable cultural work of education and intervene at different levels of the schooling practices. In all, the paper seeks to offer preliminary analysis and reflection on the re-orientation of Cultural Studies as a research and problem-solving, intellectual and critical project with a potential for long-term input to cultural policy-making. It also aims at examining the role of cultural studies practitioners as action researchers in the process of doing cultural work of education.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.534586]

Museums have been employing theatre activities in their educational programmes to outreach youngsters for more than three decades all over the world since the late 1980s; however, it is still quite a new experience for eastern and south-eastern Asian countries. In the past 3 years, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan started to use different forms of museum theatre in educational programmes to represent their multiple histories and cultural identities through various projects and showcases. Among these praxes, process drama have been most widely employed by teacher-facilitators for youngsters to reconstruct their own interpretations of historical events and narratives through chosen and rediscovered historical fragments, often neglected and even forgotten in the past. I argue that these process drama projects help the youngsters to reconstruct their own ever-changing cultural identities of these places which are under enormous change day by day in their current postcolonial and postmodern conditions. I also try to demonstrate how these praxes cross geographical, historical, ethnic and cultural as well as community borders to translate historical narratives buried in their heritage sites, ethnic community histories or aboriginal intangible cultural heritage such as tribal dances, songs and rituals into contemporary dramatic enquiry activities and performances. Why are they interested in these praxes almost at the same time lately? What are their goals in these projects? What cultural and social meanings do these praxes carry and sustain? What are the aesthetic strategies they use in these programmes and why do they choose them and how well do they work to achieve their goals? I would like to apply theories of museum theatre, process drama as well as postmodern aesthetics and educational theories and theories of post-colonialism to re-examine these praxes in their different cultural contexts to explore the above questions.
[Copyright of Research in Drama Education: The