This note is an invited "post-scriptum" where the 'script' is the articles in this volume. No effort will be made to summarise the articles. The intent is contemplative: to mull over how comparative education changes and, within that broad motif, to think about the role of 'our' foreigners. The mulling is self-indulgent, somewhat…

In this paper, "Teaching Expertise in Three Countries" project is used as an example to show the significance and contribution of international comparative research and to think about the possible implications for policy in early childhood education. The project studied the development of expertise in preschool teaching in Japan, China,…

Action follows from being. One's way of doing and understanding comparative education follows from one's being. It springs from the soul. Using [Kim, T., and R. Brooks' (2013). "Internationalisation, Mobile Academics, and Knowledge Creation in Universities: A Comparative Analysis." SRHE Research Award (2011/12) Final Report] framework on…

The field of educational leadership has yet to develop a coherent knowledge base that reflects the global diversity of policies and practices. This disconnect -- for example between Asian and Western research, presents a major challenge, curtailing authentic knowledge production and transfer. Accordingly, a major objective for the field is the…

The promotion of "critical citizenship" has become a key objective of official school curricula around the world. Using an analytic framework developed by the authors, this paper identifies the diverse conceptions of critical citizenship that are promoted, by comparing the official school curricula for citizenship in England and France.…

The rise in low-fee private (LFP) primary schooling serving relatively poor clients is becoming well-documented. However much of this literature focuses on urban areas whose dense populations are favourable to market growth and competition. This paper goes some way to filling a gap in the literature on whether LFP schools are serving the needs of…

Today the modern Silk Road between Asia and Europe is increasingly well-travelled in both directions by students, academics and policy makers. Over the last decade the European Union (EU) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been making more attempts to shape this route by creating an educational partnership through an…

This paper describes how the way the concept of learning is identified and managed in a societal context can provide a crucial clue to explaining how a form of culture as a complex mental organism is constructed and interwoven. Specifically, I argue the point by illustrating that the discourse of Confucianism has fabricated a specific form of…

The last few decades have witnessed both an expansion and a transformation of immigration flows, which pose significant challenges with respect to how people work with differences across culture and space. Against this background, this paper explores how some Chinese immigrant engineers respond to differences in the Canadian labour market. It not…

Comparative international tests of students' achievements have become increasingly popular over the past decade. An outcome of this widespread practice is the tendency of various countries to evaluate their national status according to their pupils' international ranking in such achievement tests, partly due to the common belief that high ranking…

Human capital and functionalist paradigms underpin the stance taken by most governments to education policy. These models have also had a profound effect upon the determination of education priorities in the poorest states and, indeed, upon aid policy. This paper argues, on the basis of evidence from the papers in this volume and from the wider…

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…

Since Independence in 1963, Kenya has launched three Free Primary Education programmes: the first in 1974, the second in 1979 and the most recent in 2003. Using historical data, this paper first outlines each initiative in turn, and discusses why, in the case of the earlier initiatives, impressive initial gains in improved access proved difficult…

This article examines global governance reforms as a site of contestation between three different "truths"/epistemes (the market, human rights principles, and cultural identity) in terms of the competing principles of efficiency, capability, and recognition. Nancy Fraser's conceptions of participation parity and a dialogical approach of…

Are western psychological and educational theory and practice truly applicable to a range of diverse settings around the world? We demonstrate that there is a globally dominant pedagogical orthodoxy--not exclusively western--for which there is little supportive theory nor evidence of efficacy. There is an alternative--Standards for Effective…