Over the past quarter century, Education for All (EFA), comprising a political declaration and a framework for action, has served as an influential instrument of the education global governance structure. For developing countries, the structure is added by the aid architecture which has been utilizing evolving modalities, most recently results-based financing mechanism under which aid money is released to its recipient government after achieving predetermined results indicators. Education 2030, the new global education agenda that coincides with the fourth goal of Sustainable Development Goals, retains these features.

Education takes on important roles to provide knowledge and skills that are necessary for achieving the entire Sustainable Development Goals. Its Target 4.7 encapsulates what should be the orientation of the transformative goals, by emphasizing human rights, peace, Education for Sustainable Development and other key words.

Although the philosophy of the education agenda and its key contents remain mostly unchanged during the period since 1990, the sense of policy priority has shifted more toward quality of education as a consequence of the progress to universalized access to basic education. The meaning of education quality points to effective learning outcomes, while at the same time satisfying inclusiveness and equity as crystalized in the goal statement of Education 2030. The current agenda is highly challenging especially for developing countries that are pressed to produce results which are increasingly linked to the flow of aid resources. Both aid recipients and providers need to collaborate with a broad-based participation of stakeholders and people who have knowledge but have not necessarily been involved in international cooperation in the past.

Education global governance has clearly contributed to educational development of the world but has good room to be examined further to be improved. As its member, each of us now has a role to play to realize our common goal of Education 2030.

Based on the analysis of the discourse in the process of consensus building toward a post-2015 education agenda, this paper will examine if commonly accepted notion of “global governance” represents the reality or is in need of revision.

The paper examines the interplay among actors who took part in the discourse via different channels of global governance, including both formal and informal channels. Most of the forums and entities established as part of the global governance structure are composed of representatives from UN or UNESCO member states, civil society organizations (CSOs), and UN agencies. However, each of these categories has diverse constituent groups; representing these groups is not as straightforward a task as the governance structure seems to assume. Therefore, based on interviews and qualitative text analysis, this paper will introduce major groups of actors and their major issues of concern, decision-making structure, mode of communication, and relationship with other actors. Then, based on an understanding of the characteristics of the various channels and actors, it will present the structural issues which determined the nature of discourse and the educational issues that emerged as the shared concerns of the “education community”.

What was the post-2015 discourse for the so-called education community, which in itself has an ambiguous and virtual existence? The key words post-2015 and post-EFA provide us with an opportunity to untangle how shared norms and codes of conduct were socially constructed in the vertical and horizontal spaces of discourse at the global, regional, and national levels.

Given that the most of such processes toward constructing the norms and decision-making framework happened outside of the formal United Nations-led mechanism, the paper argues that the global governance theories based on the relationships between states and their representative “international bodies” are losing relevance to the global dynamics of consensus building.

This article aims to analyze how the main actors of global governance in education emerged since the 2000s define and view equality and equity of education and to address its challenges and potentials. Borrowing the analytical perspectives from global governance theories and the UNESCO's conceptual framework on five dimensions of knowledge, the authors reviewed the goals, targets, and indicators set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the selected documents published by the main actors (i.e. World Bank, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Fast Track Initiative (FTI) and United Nations Girls Education Initiatives (FTI-UNGEI), Global Campaign for Education (GCE), Collective Consultation of NGOs for Education for All (CCNGO/EFA)) which discuss equality and equity of education between 2010 and 2015.

The authors found that the definition and theoretical perspective on equality and equity of education vary across actors of global governance. It is especially evident that equity of knowledge acquisition and utilization draws more attention than equity of creation, control, and relevance of knowledge. While the SDGs have widened its horizon on equity to include new values of education such as Education for Sustainable Development, culture of peace and non-violence, and global citizenship that apply to developed countries as well as developing countries, its indicators are still ambivalent and constrained by the orthodox dichotomy of development status and gender. Neoliberal and communitarian ideas are mixed in the discourses of the documents. For global governance to embrace the notion of ‘international justice’ or ‘global justice’ in equality and equity of education, an untiring and rigorous efforts and arrangements will be required to promote dialogue at all levels.

This paper discusses the development of global governance with a view of “Education quality”. It analyzes international agendas, based on the global governance and the effects on the quality of education at school level in developing countries. As a case study, it focuses on the inclusive education in Malawi, one of the most poverty-stricken countries in Sub Sahara Africa. Malawi is introducing Inclusive education to include all children, especially children with disabilities, following a decision of global governance targeting EFA and Education for 2030.

From the results of the field research, it is clear that the quality of education has been sacrificed and teachers are suffering from introducing inclusive education in Malawi. Making matters worse, it has added to the vicious cycle of teachers' attrition rate getting worse which further causes the quality of education to worsen. Local people, including teachers, appreciate the principle of inclusive education, but teachers and schools have no idea how to include children with disabilities, and they are not able to include successfully. However, the factors that cause these negative effects is not only the global governance, but also the process from global governance to the local level including for example the dysfunction of regional governance, the Malawi government's inept policy governance and poor school management. If regional governance provided an “African model of inclusive education”, each country could adjust it to suit their financial condition and local context of education. However, the Malawi government just followed a global agenda without reflecting on local conformities. They introduced inclusive education without enough preparation to supply teacher trainings, a large enough number of teachers supply and teaching materials. Whereas Global governance might be able to provide global target, principles and ideal concepts of education the Regional governance of each country needs to adjust them for local contexts.

Early Childhood Education (ECE) has lately been recognized as important in both developed and developing nations, and references to ECE are found not only in education policies but also in national development plans. Behind this change lies global governance of ECE. Should we welcome such world trend uncritically or be skeptical and pose questions? Moreover, how has it affected ECE policies and practices in developing countries? This paper aims at delineating the trajectory of global governance of ECE, identifying conflicts between the global governance and unique characteristics of ECE, and finally discussing how policy makers in developing countries should plan and implement ECE policies under the circumstances.

The key findings of this paper are as follows. First, depicting the development of global governance of ECE has revealed that ECE underwent a period of major changes in recent years, and that there has been an increasing interest in setting standards and indicators of young children's learning and development. Second, four main conflicts are detected, given discrepancies between the unique features of ECE and the ideas and concepts embedded in the global governance of ECE. They are: 1) a biased perspective that captures ECE solely for preparing children ready for school; 2) a question whether quality assurance of ECE is made possible by standardization of what a child should know and be able to do at a certain age along with the wide use of indicators to monitor their progress; 3) a strong concern that it could lead to neglect or elimination of children's abilities and attitudes that are difficult to measure and/or not in line with global standards; and 4) a worry that the focus on ECE policies and results has kept the learning process of young children in developing countries as a black box. Finally, for ECE policy makers in developing countries, it is of overarching importance to act on its own initiative in consideration of their cultural uniqueness of ECE in each country; to always maintain viewpoints such as the realization of equity and respect for diversity; and to return to the norms guided by international laws whenever necessary, such as the best interests of the child and ECE as fulfilling the child's right to development.

This article aims to confirm the possibilities of Non-formal Education (NFE) and the position of learning in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to reflect the subject of learning from recent pedagogy. The lifelong learning discourse in Japan tends to concentrate on learning after school graduation, although the SDG 4 emphasizes the importance of lifelong and life-wide learning which must cover from early childhood education, school education, and adult education in the formal, non-formal, and informal settings. As the SDGs influence education and its environment as a part of global governance over the border between so-called developed and developing countries, the NFE concept could show more possibilities than retrospective school education concept.

The dynamics in power relationships and practice of education and learning could be analyzed in the axes of formality/flexibility and authority, based on recent NFE research, beyond the traditional dichotomy of formal and non-formal provision of education. This is because the two meanings of NFE have been mixed in the field of educational development and international cooperation: One is the role of NFE is expected to improve efficiency of schooling and complement formal provision, and thus international organizations and donors focus on its cost-performance. The other is that alternative channels of learning could ensure human development with local contexts as critical pedagogy points out because the modern school education system function to filter and put certain individuals into lower social status.

The recent research in education shows that learning means a modification of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values after certain experiences. Lifelong learning occur anywhere and anytime in and out of school and can be hardly grasped by the SGD 4 indicators only. In other words, our learning always influence the achievement of all the SDGs because we can change our choices when learn and/or experience. The NFE concept can bridge the interests and partners of various SDG actors if we can focus more on learning.

This paper aims to clarify the unique characteristics of the higher education field in terms of global governance and education development. We overviewed the relationship between global governance and higher education development with a primary focus on the multilayered initiatives in international cooperation cases by international organizations, national governments and agencies, universities and other higher education institutions, as well as individual academics. We identified two main approaches in global governance for higher education development. The first approach is based on providing global and regional governance frameworks through the settings of international laws, treaties, and charters or presenting new concepts through research, reports, and dialogues. The second approach is to build frameworks of international cooperation through the initiatives of universities and higher education institutions as well as individual academics and their networks. The second approach is inherent in the higher education field that is backed by the tradition of academic autonomy as well as the more recent trend of their market-based behavior as knowledge industries. Finally, the authors suggest implications for stakeholders in higher education development in Japan: (1) the need to know the global landscape of issues in higher education, (2) a precise understanding of the position of the Japanese case among countries with various experiences of higher education development, (3) the importance of promoting higher education development in collaboration with the Japanese industry and society, (4) the importance of fostering leaders who can play active roles as facilitators in international dialogue and collaboration in higher education, and (5) the necessity of linking international cooperation and collaboration activities with the internationalization reform of Japanese higher education.

The purpose of this article is to set a theoretical reference point from the concept of education to relativize and reexamine global governance in educational development. There are two reasons why this theme to be tackled. First, it is because normative theory is needed in the field of international educational development. Theory has the role to make another value judgment on the outside of real politics. But in reality, in this field, indeed on global governance, theories and real politics are overlapped. Second, it is because the way to take global governance in international educational development does not adequately pay theoretical attention to education. Education is treated in the same manner as other international development fields. But education has its own essentials. Therefore, international educational development has to be argued on the basis of educational natures.

Responding to the first point, global justice theories are normative, and we can apply it to global governance in educational development. Among other global justice theories, Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach is deeply related to education. But her theory has not relativized, but already explained real global governance in educational development. So it cannot be used as a theoretical outside. In terms of the second point, education has at least two roles or functions: protection of human rights and socialization of children. If we stand at the later function, one of the educational essentials is sharply defined: those who determine and provide education are not the side of educand but the side of educator. We have already been and are always educational architecture for children. Indeed, global governance is a form of educational architecture. So we can say that education has one-wayness and asymmetricity as its original nature. Education has also irreversibility. We cannot erase what we once educated, turn back a clock before we educated, and live his/her life in place of the educand his/herself. Can we narrate education easily and proudly? Educational essentials require that we reflect the difficulty of education to narrate. This is a theoretical outside of international educational development.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the government approaches to support Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) for poverty elimination. To discuss this issue, the article examines two hypotheses in a case of Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) in Tanzania and identifies who could be an appropriate target to receive governmental support in the ASGM.

The first hypothesis is to examine the relation between ASM's production and household income. The analysis shows that household income of those who are producing gold ores is higher than that of those who have not yet produced them. At the same time, it shows that the former group has more access to capitals than the latter group. The analysis therefore implies that the latter group is having more difficulty of finding a way out of a poverty cycle partly due to lack of access to capital.

The second hypothesis is to examine whether the latter group is an appropriate target of governmental support. The analysis shows that in the two groups, the latter group shows higher degree of having trust in the government. In addition, the latter group shows more significant association between the degree of trust in the government and that of trust of diggers in a Primary Mining License holder and a pit holder, who are responsible for management of mining operation. This explains to some extent that the latter has not only more trust in the government but more potential for collective mining operation.

It is therefore appropriate to consider those who have not yet produced the ore as a target of governmental support for poverty elimination in the case of ASGM in Tanzania. The result implies that although ASM has been regarded by the international community as a category of governmental support for poverty reduction, further targeting of the support is needed in pursuit of poverty ‘elimination.’

The Adaptation Fund (AF) was established under Kyoto Protocol in 2001 in order to finance concrete adaptation projects for vulnerable areas. AF has several unique characteristics in terms of its finance modality and governance structure. “Direct Access” allows developing countries to access financial resources directly via National Implementing Entities (NIEs), which has chosen with some criteria and standards by the Adaptation Fund Board. This approach is expected to ensure country ownership of fund-recipient countries because it enables NIEs to have the responsibility for the project implementation and management. However some studies shows that the logic of DA has some merits for developing countries to implement the adaptation project effectively, it is unclear that DA works effectively for vulnerable area on the ground level.

This article examine AF project in Senegal entitled “Adaptation to Coastal Erosion in vulnerable areas” based on the field survey and discuss whether DA works effectively or not especially for vulnerable areas. The Centre de Suivi Ecologiqué was appointed as NIE in 2009 and the project was implemented from 2010 to 2014. The author conducted expert interviews for CSE, international organizations and focus group interviews for local beneficiaries few times. The result shows that it is unclear that direct access approach worked effectively for most vulnerable communities particularly in Joal. It is also important the institutional capacity of CSE should be much more strengthened in terms of the human and technical resource management, and more careful sensitization among stakeholders are required before starting each activity.

A “middle income trap” broadly refers to a situation in which a developing economy succeeds in achieving a middle-income level but fails to reach a high-income level for a sustained period of time due to a slowdown in growth rates. Debates on the causes of such trap point to varying factors including: lack of human capital accumulation; weak institutions, and lack of technological innovation leading to a failure of upgrading industrial structure suitable for a high-income level. This paper focuses on accumulation of human capital as one of the determining factors for escaping the trap and investigates how the economies that are stuck at a middle-income level and those that succeed in achieving a high-income level differ in terms of human capital conditions. Two main results are obtained. First, those that are stuck in the trap are characterized by a low ratio of population completing secondary education or above compared with those that succeeded in achieving a high-income level. This implies that human capital accumulation equivalent to secondary education or higher is required for reaching high-income level. Second, regression analyses using cross-section data found that the economies that succeeded in achieving high-income level had attained relatively higher education among their populations even as they entered a middle-income level. Consequently, it is important that the economies accumulate adequate human capital beyond secondary education level to escape the middle-income trap.

The objective of this article is to examine the initial conditions of economic development of Southeast Asia, or the ten ASEAN nations. For this purpose, this article focuses on agricultural production, more specifically, the rice yield per hectare and self-sufficiency of rice in the region, in the late 1930s. The late pre-war era was chosen in consideration of the availability of comparable data. There are two major findings. First, the level of variance of rice yield in Southeast Asia (0.042) was much lower than that of Northeast Asia (0.147). In other words, Southeast Asia had more homogeneous initial conditions in terms of rice production, in comparison with the neighboring Northeast Asia. Second, the rice exporters in the region, i.e. Burma, French Indochina, and Thailand met the demand of the rice importers in the region, i.e. Dutch East Indies, British Malaya and Borneo, and the Philippines. Meanwhile, the rice importers could finance their rice import by their agricultural export. To put it another way, Southeast Asia in total was in the condition of self-sufficiency of rice. This is considered as a stable foundation of development for the regional members at the time of their beginning ‘modern economic growth.’

JICA evaluates its ODA projects based on the DAC framework of evaluation by using an external evaluation team in order to keep transparency and objectivity. Recently, JICA has modified its evaluation scheme and puts more emphasis on an internal monitoring instead of external evaluation. Considering the nature of technical cooperation projects, an internal monitoring is more suitable for the project improvement as the targets of these projects are human beings, which can change dynamically during the project period, and the project needs to be developed continuously in accordance with the change of the targets.

A theory of program evaluation provides the useful concept for the project improvement, not only at the stage of “C” in the PDCA cycle, but also at all stages of the project. Therefore, this paper applies the program evaluation theory to a specific case of an ODA technical cooperation project, named “School-Based Disaster Education Project in Turkey,” to analyze how this framework of program evaluation works for the project betterment, in particular for the project which aims at human development and which assumes dynamic change of the targets. In this study, authors collected data three times, which were baseline, mid-term and end-line, based on surveys and interviews. The data were analyzed statistically and qualitatively to produce the feedback for the project. Instead of reporting the details of statistical analyses, this paper focused on examining the evaluation design by referring to the program evaluation theory.

Through the case analyses of evaluation activities, this paper found that the program evaluation theory is conformable to the projects for human development. This paper also drew the lessons from the case study as follows:

(1) In order to increase effectiveness and efficiency, the project needs to include the feedback system in the evaluation activities.

(2) To increase effectiveness and impact, the project needs to conduct experimental-designed social surveys in an appropriate timing.

(3) To increase sustainability, the project needs to allocate evaluation experts or personnel cooperatively both in the Japanese team and the counterpart side.

Some post-development scholars focus on indigenous movements in Latin America which has rejected western modernization and insist that these indigenous people are searching for “alternatives to development.” However, many scholars, such as anthropologists, criticize that idea as indigenous people in Latin America normally request “development assistance” to improve their quality of life. Why do indigenous people in Latin America request “development assistance” while they reject western modernization? As post-development scholars cannot answer this question, they cannot develop a post-development theory. In this article, the author tries to answer this question using a case study of indigenous rural women in highland Bolivia; the author found that the women requested development assistance as they thought that their social status increased when they undertook skills training offered by development agencies—the more training, the greater an increase in their social status. This means that development agencies not only provide development assistance but also create the demand for development assistance at the same time. In conclusion, the author suggests that post-development scholars should rethink the notion that indigenous people in Latin America are searching for “alternatives to development”, as they request continual development assistance after receiving such assistance. It is not a matter of whether they reject western modernization or not, but a matter of supply and demand.

Labour intensive construction methodology using local labour has been adopted in various regions in Japan since early times, as seen in the existence of terms such as michibushin (road maintenance by the community), and it contributed to the creation of jobs in the post-war period through “the make work road repair program” of relief measures for the unemployed. Since the late 1960s, Labour Based Technology (LBT) has attracted attention as a technology for infrastructure construction in developing countries, with research and pilot projects conducted by the World Bank (WB).

Research conducted up to the early 1970s led to the recognition that many LBT projects were comparatively more advantageous than Equipment Based Technology (EBT), both technologically and economically. Subsequently, LBT was gradually introduced in developing countries, and many LBT technical manuals and handbooks have been prepared by the International Labour Organization (ILO), other international institutions and government agencies in order to summarize successful LBT case studies.

For a project implementation method, LBT emphasizes the participation of local people facing poverty in communities experiencing the greatest need of infrastructure. LBT is an effective method for recovering and promoting secure communities in developing countries, and particularly in post-conflict countries. In this context, this study examines LBT approach with a focus on regional society and local communities in post-conflict countries.

Throughout literature reviews and site surveys for post-conflict countries, the objectives of this study were: (1) to assist institutional set-up and consensus building of local communities; (2) to establish an effective approach for introducing LBT in post-conflict and developing countries such as Afghanistan.

The author analyzes the processes of technology transfer from Japanese to Korean steel industries on an individual basis and corroborates that university-educated engineers of Korea contributed to the assimilation of an advanced technology as part of the social capacity of a developing nation. For this purpose, the author made interviews to Japanese engineers who had participated in the technical cooperation for the construction of the Pohang Steel Works in the late 1960s. Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) is known for its successful operation and rapid growth after the construction of the first steel works.

It is generally known that human capital is part of the social capacity necessary for acquiring advanced technologies. The author puts the focus on the role of engineers of the Pohang Steel Works who had graduated from Korean universities in the engineering field and demonstrates that the process that Korean engineers went through could not have been carried on without their contribution.

For example, even though Korean engineers knew little about the integrated steel production, capabilities to understand engineering theories and terminologies enabled them to intensively discuss with Japanese engineers on the overall construction plan in 1970, which largely contributed to the smooth construction and operation. During the training in Japan, engineers of Pohang Steel Works understood background theories of operation technologies, not the skill, and later applied Japanese technologies to the Korean steel works.

The conclusion is that the capability of university-educated engineers of Korea was necessary for the quick and smooth technology transfer and hence establishment of the integrated steel production in Korea as part of the social capacity to assimilate an advanced technology, while appropriate utilization of human resources by POSCO was also conducive to the smooth operation.

Existing research has shown that Early Childhood Education (ECE) positively affects children's social, cognitive, and intellectual development. In addition, the experience of ECE exerts favorable influence on students and improves school performance, reduces dropout rates in primary school, and lowers crime rates during adolescence. However, almost half of children worldwide do not have access to a formal ECE institution, such as preschool. The enrolment rate of ECE institutions is dramatically lower in developing countries. For those who do not attend any formal ECE institution, home-based ECE can be a solution to support children's school readiness before entering primary school. In some countries, however, many parents have difficulties in conducting home-based ECE by themselves due to the lack of knowledge and materials required.

This research focuses on nomadic herder parents in rural Mongolia whose children have limited access to formal ECE institutions. The purpose of this research is to support nomadic herder parents in finding how they can assist their children's home-based ECE. In order to provide an opportunity to understand what to do for home-based ECE, the author designed a workshop and implemented it in two districts in Uvrukhangai province, Mongolia. The data was collected from the participants of the workshop through questionnaires before and after the workshop, as well as interviews conducted at the end. To analyze the data, both data sets were compared with each other and interviews were utilized to ensure the result.

The result shows that the workshop helped the participants from both districts to understand what to do to assist their children and to promote home-based ECE. Moreover, the participants were highly motivated to implement home-based ECE after the workshop.