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Abstract

In the 2/2018 issue, IJREE has five articles in the Special Section, one paper in the General Contribution, and three reports in the Development in Extended Education section.In December 2017, WERA IRN organized a conference with the theme of 'Extended education from an international comparative point of view' at University of Bamberg, Germany. During the conference, one of the sessions to which many participants showed great interest was 'A discussion about the terms in the field and about the field of extended education.' The goal of this session was to explore the terms of extended education which vary across the nations and conceptualize the meaning and scope of extended education. Given the importance of the concepts in the development of research, IJREE editors decided to include the Special Section on this issue. Authors who presented at the WERA IRN conference were invited. Five manuscripts which underwent rigorous reviews were finally included in this section.In the General Contribution section, one article by Isa Steinmann & Rolf Strietholt was included. Given the continuing transformation of the traditional half-day school system into the all-day school system in Germany, the authors examined whether all-day schools promote student achievement and reduce social achievement inequalities. Their research found that all-day schools did not make a difference for student achievement nor reduce educational inequality at the secondary school level in Germany.Three short reports are presented in the section of Development in Extended Education. Fuyuko Kanefuji provides information about the recent Japanese government's policy on afterschool programs which emphasizes school-community collaborations. Hanna Koskimies, Iina Berden, Emma Harju present the report about the Finnish Government's key projects of which the goal is to incorporate culture into children's and young people's daily lives, support their creativity, and make art and culture easily accessible to them. These two policy reports would contribute to expanding our knowledge on extended education, particularly from the public policy point of view. Finally, Myung Suk Woo's report suggests that the economics of education perspective can be employed to understand human behaviors in relation to extended education. Based on the human capital theory, she argues Special Section