International comparative ethnographic studies of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) are difficult to conduct but worth the effort. Comparative studies featuring thick description and polysemic interpretations can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, expand the menu of the possible, expose the provincialism of national approaches, and…

In this article, the authors focus on ways to structure conversations about racism in world history classrooms through a case study of race and racism in Haiti at the turn of the 19th century. Drawing on the events of the Haitian Revolution, the authors describe how identifying patterns of racial hierarchy can provide a framework for talking about…

The definition and goals of education are mercurial, varying widely across time and space. In Cambodia, which has experienced both flux and reflux over time, education--particularly in schools--has strongly reflected the political circumstances of the time. Education as a fundamental human right is a very new idea: it was, and still is to a…

As detailed in the articles throughout this issue, the U.S. education system experienced a number of structural developments throughout the 20th century. These changes served to shift the landscape of decision-making authority in multiple areas of primary and secondary schooling. This article provides an international perspective on the changes…

New theories and theory-based methodological approaches have found their way into Comparative Education--just as into Comparative Social Science more generally--in increasing number in the recent past. The essays of this volume express and critically discuss quite a range of these positions such as, inter alia, the theory of self-organizing social…

An outline of the French electoral system covers the voters and their voting rights, assembly seats and candidates, political campaigning, allocation of assembly seats, balloting system, and recent coalitions. Election results for a bibliography are appended. (MSE)

Four separate but overlapping power centers in French universities are described and discussed: the state authority (minister), faculty, political and trade unions, and students. Confrontations between these powers have characterized French higher education in the last 15 years, and they have been at the root of the concept of autonomy. (MSE)

This paper falls into three parts: a description of the current French educational system and the groups influencing it; presentation of the more pressing educational problems of the 1980s; and a draft of developmental modifications likely to occur if liberals or, alternatively, socialists win political power in the early 1980s. (Author/SJL)

The report presents a rationale for School Based Curriculum Development (SBCD). SBCD is defined as any school initiated process which brings about a redistribution of power, responsibility, and control between central and local educational authorities. The result would be that the schools would acquire legal and administrative autonomy and…