The Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) results, released in 2013, have spurred researchers to engage in rich analyses. In addition to making it possible to compare skill levels among the 23 participating nations, the PIAAC data have enabled researchers to analyze relationships among cognitive literacy, numeracy, and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of principals in light of public management reforms taking place in the German educational system and in reference to the empirical patterns uncovered by the papers contained in the Special Issue. Policy makers have created new expectations and new technologies that seem to suggest to…

Secretary of Education Duncan (2010) lamented the state of U.S. education in 2010 after the release of the results from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). He wrote: "Unfortunately, the 2009 PISA results show that American students are poorly prepared to compete in today's knowledge economy. President Obama has…

In this article the author discusses public reaction generated by the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. He argues that it is not simply that the methodologies adopted by the main rankers -- Times Higher Education (THE), QS and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University -- are diverse and open to the usual interpretation, but there…

The purpose of this dialogue was to begin grappling with notions of neutrality and academic development in three non-western contexts: (1) Jamaica; (2) Ethiopia; and (3) Japan. The authors were asked to describe the political geography of academic development in their countries and to explore questions of neutrality. This dialogue therefore tries…

In her teaching, research, and community activities in Canada, the author has repeatedly confronted questions regarding equality, diversity, and power. In this article, the author discusses diversity and equal opportunity to achieve excellence in education. Reflecting on these issues should help everyone to understand the complexities involved in…

As a springboard into her response inspired by Noah Sobe's article, this author offers two possibilities for what cosmopolitanisms can tell about comparative and international education research. First, from her perspective, rooted in justice and peace studies, she is intrigued by several authors' assessments of cosmopolitanism as a cognitive or…

This article attempts a contrast to the contribution by Hugh Starkey. Rather than his account of the inexorable rise of human rights discourse, and of the implementation of human rights standards, human rights are here presented as always and necessarily scandalous and highly contested. First, I explain why the UK has lagged so far behind its…

This article presents an interview with Michael Barber, a partner at McKinsey & Company, leading its global education practice. He has been working on major challenges of performance, organization, and reform in government and the public services, especially education, in the U.S., U.K., and other countries. Barber was instrumental in preparing…

Since the late 1990s there has been a fundamental shift in the way schooling and even education as a whole is evaluated. From this new perspective the education system would seem to be interpreted as a sub-system of the economic system and thus subservient to it. Decisions on education matters seem to have become determinant for individual…

This paper argues that the current approach to educational quality formation in transnational higher education promotes educational imperialism, and that guidelines and practices should be altered to embrace context-sensitive measures of quality. The claims are sustained by findings from a study that investigated how academics understood and…

Higher education institutions seem to be becoming increasingly flexible with different functions. Most universities' mission statements involve teaching, research and service, but while the teaching and research missions are clearly defined and located within certain areas of the university activities, service is less clear and more ambiguous,…

In Italian secondary schools, it is not literature that is studied but the history of literature; it is not philosophy that is studied but the history of philosophy. Similarly, in higher education, history students even have to take an exam in the history of historiography. This is to say that in Italy, history plays a key cultural role. That is…

In this commentary, the author discusses some of the issues she finds interesting from a Swedish perspective, and also makes some comparisons between the systems. The English and Swedish education and assessment systems have some fundamental differences, but also similarities. Some are becoming even more evident after learning about the…

This essay focuses on the use of ideal types within different theoretical frameworks for the comparative analysis of culture and values. It emphasizes the importance of cultural agency, and the potential for enhanced understanding and the anticipation of future developments through exploring deep-level cultural patterns. The essay is written as a…