Taking a global perspective

Osmosis is the movement of particles across a boundary until the saturation of particles has been equalized on both sides of the boundary. Although this term is most often used in biology, it is a relevant metaphor for comparative and international education (CIE), as the boundaries which define the field are permeable, with few limitations on what is and is not considered CIE. Previous introductory chapters to the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education have examined the professionalization of the field through the characteristics of articles published in prominent CIE journals. While drawing on a similar framework, this chapter, rather than examining CIE from the inside, examines the development of the field from the outside by considering what, where, and why CIE-related articles appear in journals outside of the field. In addition to data on articles from CIE journals for 2017, education-related articles from domestic and international journals with the highest impact factor from the fields of sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, psychology, and education are also included. These components will provide multiple points of comparison and discussion to examine how non-CIE journals include CIE related topics to identify which themes permeate the CIE boundary.

This article, which serves to introduce the special issue on “Contesting Coloniality: Rethinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Education,” brings to the fore the rarely acknowledged colonial entanglements of knowledge in the field of comparative and international education (CIE). We begin by showing how colonial logics underpin the scholarship of one of the field’s founding figures, Isaac L. Kandel. These logics gained legitimacy through the Cold War geopolitical contexts in which the field was established and have shaped subsequent approaches including the much-debated world-culture approach to globalization in education. The article then reviews decolonial, postcolonial, and southern theory scholarship as an intellectual resource upon which CIE scholars and practitioners can draw to tackle these active colonial legacies. We situate the contribution of this special issue within this larger intellectual movement and call for a major collective rethinking of the way ...

Adopting Maria Manzon’s theoretical framework, which draws on Foucault and proposes that comparative education as an academic field is socially constructed, I suggest that the field is neither stable nor well defined. To demonstrate this, I conduct a content analysis of the Comparative Education Review, using Klaus Krippendorff’s methodological framework to study comparative and international education (CIE) researchers’ understanding of the national—and of their related knowledge production in the field. Many comparativists express interests in multiple countries, and their knowledge production takes the form of individual country studies. The countries are habitually studied using a “problem approach” focusing on one specific aspect of the country under investigation and using an associated social science methodology deemed appropriate. Few comparativists are making explicit use of or reference to any methodology that is unique to comparative education. Efforts to catalog and systematize CIE research have demonstrated that the field is becoming so inclusive that it hardly is distinguishable from educational studies as a whole. Hence, I suggest that instead of speaking about unifying features of the field, it may be more relevant to speak about frequent elements, such as a focus on the national, and a knowledge production characterized by the academic practitioner who desires to improve the education systems studied. A third frequent element may be the focus on educational development, thus justifying the label of “comparative, international, and development education.” One challenge of the field is its dependence on Western social science discourses, which may be marginalizing other voices.

This article examines the teaching of comparative and international education (CIE) in undergraduate and master’s programmes in 30 UK universities via bibliometric and content analysis of the handbooks of 55 CIE courses. Our analysis demonstrates great diversity in what is categorised as CIE, alongside some clear patterns and preoccupations evident across units, as reflected in the selection of materials, and geographical and thematic coverage. Findings suggest a ‘UK-centric’ orientation to CIE, marked by an emphasis on UK academic voices and references, and geographical foci which centre on the former colonial sphere of influence. Alongside this we identify three broad orientations to CIE teaching in the UK – ‘positivist’, ‘socio-cultural’, and ‘critical’ – and consider their nature and prevalence across different institutions and programmes.

Consistent and systematic reflective practice is a key element of professionalization. Reflecting on the current status and trends highlights areas of success and areas for further examination within the field of comparative and international education (CIE). This research examines the characteristics of articles in peer-reviewed comparative and international education journals from the last three years in order to identify how the field has changed. Data explored include number of authors, author(s) institutional location(s), research methodology, content or context of analysis, and keywords. Results were compared to questions and recommendations posed by Bereday in 1964 and in the initial Annual Review in 2013. Single-country studies continued to dominate the field for the third year; however, there has been a shift in methodological approaches, with more balance between qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Collaboration, evidenced by an increase in co-authored articles, has increased across the field. Findings from keyword analysis show that although six keywords have remained at the top of the field across the three years, there are few topics which unite the field. These results indicate that although one strength of the field has been cited as its diversity, CIE lacks a common focus on methods, theories, or contents that set it apart from other education-affiliated disciplines. Scholars are encouraged to continue consistent and systematic reflection in determining future directions of the field by identifying unique approaches to distinguish CIE.

This chapter examines the usefulness of the field of comparative and international education (CIE) in reference to supporting and informing the development of education in the Pacific Islands (Oceania) region. Accordingly, it reconsiders the conceptualization and practice of the field by unpacking understandings of CIE with specific reference to the Pacific Islands. I argue that advancing the field in Oceania entails critical examination of context, of persisting colonial legacies in education and the broader social, economic, and political landscape. Considerations of these discourses identify some of the tensions, contradictions, and ambivalences that eventuate as “education for national development” is reconciled with indigenous knowledges and the intellectual traditions that sustain Pacific island communities. Adopting a postcolonial perspective, this chapter explores recent educational initiatives in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Solomon Islands. These initiatives reveal the complexities and multifaceted dynamics that underpin the context of Pacific Islands systems of education. They also reflect how Pacific educational leaders negotiate global imperatives for education while observing indigenous knowledge systems and cultural values. The lessons drawn from these case studies suggest that comparative education scholars need to rethink partnerships with colleagues and neighbors in consideration of Pacific and indigenous (including Australia and New Zealand) cultural protocols of engagement by honoring respect and reciprocity, mutual benefit, and empowerment. Such conceptual and practical reconsiderations may facilitate an assessment of the impact of western intellectual contributions on systems of education in Oceania.

The dynamics of teacher education in Africa are complex. To understand their complexities, one has to plow through multiple layers of players that provide funding, policy direction, curricula, teaching methods, and technologies to teacher education systems grounded in divergent philosophies and histories. There is a need to understand how ideas regarding teacher policies and practices are filtered between countries and how those ideas are shaped to fit unique contexts in which they are introduced. Considering the roles played by multinational and bilateral international organizations, national governments, colleges, universities, teacher unions, the private sector, and civil society, it is imperative that data is collected and evaluated to measure impact of reforms and policies that guide teacher training for novices and in-service for professional teachers. As such, the critical role comparative and international teacher education research plays cannot be understated. Comparative and International Education (CIE) relevant research serves to advance understanding of teacher education and professional development by highlighting best practices, issues, inputs, outputs, gaps, and differences, the relationships with student learning outcomes, and standardization and harmonization of teacher education curricula in a very crowded arena. CIE relevant research provides the necessary data for examining policies and initiating reforms that lead to positive student learning outcomes. In addition, the research provides benchmarks in novice teacher training and professional development that contribute to teaching efficacy and teacher effectiveness.

This paper addresses the theme of internationalism in Kuwaiti teachers’ colleges. The main argument of this paper is that dimensions of comparative and international education (CIE) receive little attention in initial teacher programmes. To this end, the study examines first the importance of holding international pedagogy in a time of globalization. Second, it investigates the current context of CIE as a course subject in initial teacher education programmes in Kuwait, and finally, it identifies the opportunity and possibility of integrating international and comparative perspectives in these programmes. The study upon which this paper is based utilizes both document and content analysis. The findings reveal some difficulties, challenges, and concerns related to the context of CIE and the process of incorporating it into initial teacher programmes. Based on this, some suggestions are made with particular reference to the Kuwaiti context.

The shifting of the global order against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis entails deep structural shifts in the increasingly complex architecture of global governance of education, characterized by multistakeholder arrangements, the enmeshing of the digital and physical worlds in the digitization of schools, and the reshaping of education and the practices of teachers by EdTech corporations inserting themselves into public education systems. This study advances a technographic approach that is suited to capture these shifting socio-technical configurations within comparative and international education (CIE) research. To illustrate the application of technography, we examine the public private partnerships enshrined in the Malaysian Education Blueprint, and Malaysia’s Digital Education Learning Initiative (DELIMa).

This chapter reimagines comparative and international education (CIE) as a dynamic and reflexive field by critically engaging the metaphor and method of the rhizome, drawn from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). It challenges traditional aspirations toward disciplinary closure, cautioning against rigid hierarchical models, often symbolized by the “tree,” that risk narrowing the field’s intellectual and methodological scope. Instead, the chapter advocates for a principled pluralism that values rigorous, context-sensitive scholarship across disciplinary boundaries. Rather than rejecting structure altogether, it suggests a more flexible and relational approach that embraces historical insight, empirical complexity, and the productive tensions within the field. Key contemporary developments, such as decolonial research, transnational policy networks, and responses to global crises, illustrate how CIE scholars are already working beyond disciplinary confines through collaborative, practice-informed, and politically engaged scholarship. The chapter affirms that CIE’s strength lies not in coherence for its own sake but in its capacity to remain open to transformation, rooted in critical inquiry, and driven by a commitment to meaningful impact. The rhizome is not offered as an abstract ideal but as a generative practice for navigating the field’s ongoing becoming.

The implications and impacts of the educational intelligent economy from the vantage point of digital frontierism is explored using a decolonial framework, with a specific focus on Big Data and data sharing in Comparative and International Education (CIE). Recent debates are reviewed about CIE’s past histories and its current directions to tease out their implications for data sharing. The authors demonstrate how data sharing continues to reinforce imperialism through control, dissemination, and application of data, and how electronic and digital colonialism preserve current intellectual and structural hegemonies. Then, we give an example of how donors and funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, engage in neoliberal scientism and control of data, and how it affects the future of social sciences, including CIE. Our inquiry is at the intersections of economic intelligence and educational intelligence in a rapidly evolving technocentric, data-dominated, and networked economy. The authors demonstrate how educational intelligence in the global economy may exacerbate the asymmetric access to data between the global North and the South, as educational data are increasingly becoming global commodities to be traded between various public and private actors. Finally, the authors argue that decolonial participatory research designs that aim at positive, sustained transformations, as opposed to the stagnancy of Big Data and data mining, should be used to address the problems inherent to the Educational Intelligent Economy.

This introduction explores the trends, challenges, and possibilities of comparative and international education (CIE) as identified by six comparativist scholars and incorporates some of my own work on this topic. The scholars’ work had diverse foci; however, the overall theme was CIE needing to (re-)center goals of ending socio-historical oppressions. This is with reflectivity that CIE forms a contested terrain of histories, and too-often current trends, of being political tools for sustaining/intensifying oppressions and dominance over Nature. The authors’ calls of CIE for peace, justice, and sustainability were discussed through the following themes with many intersectionalities between the articles: decoloniality, citizenship education that counters citizen/non-citizen othering, globally holistic and planetarily sustainable development and education, and humanizing education that grounds collectivity and de-alienation.

From a sociology of education perspective, a concern in teacher education is that teaching practices and expectations to the professional role of teachers often build on assumptions that derive from the social context of instruction. Whereas international comparisons regularly focus on characteristics of individuals or selected segments of the population, such as pre-service teachers or individual teacher education programmes, this article contextualizes socially derived expectations using secondary analysis of survey data for fourteen countries across four continents. A review of publicly available data from the World Bank and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) was carried out. The secondary analysis consists of a juxtaposition and visualization of descriptive data. Analysis of survey data highlights shared assumptions and expectations across fourteen countries. The data indicates that some teacher attitudes are not a result of characteristics specific to individual teachers or the teacher profession in general but are associated with variation between countries. The article draws theoretically and methodologically on prior Comparative and International Education (CIE) research and proposes that teachers across subject matter specializations and across contexts benefit from the development of Pedagogical Decision-Making skills (PDM). More attention to the development of specific PDM skills is proposed as a means for strengthening teacher resilience.

L'objectif des auteurs de cet article est double. Il s'agit d'une part de presenter une etude exploratoire sur les tendances actuelles temoignant de l'emergence d'un nouvel activisme non gouvernemental dans le champ de l'education et d'autre part de dresser un cadre analytique afin d'evaluer l'importance de cet activisme, en elaborant des concepts bases sur les recherches ayant porte sur les nouveaux mouvements sociaux et les debats theoriques actuels a propos de la societe civile mondiale.

This essay is a call for world-systems analysis of education. Increasingly, the field of comparative education is moving toward more sophisticated examinations of education in relationship to economic, political, and social forces. Studies of the ecology of educational institutions and processes, however, often fail to take into account an international context of transactions. To date, most macro studies of education have taken the nation-state as the basic unit of analysis.' An examination of the international forces impinging upon education systems is no less essential than an examination of the international economic order would be to an