A contentious debate in academic as well as policy circles relates to the growth in private schooling in the Global South. While proponents highlight the superior learning outcomes of pupils in private schools, others have argued that this is merely a reflection of the more advantaged family background of private school pupils, rather than an…

Historically, education policy has frequently framed American Indians, a contested term long-used to describe peoples indigenous to the United States, through a deficit-lens as "other." While "CER" publishes research that looks at other countries as a point of analysis, rarely has it included articles that compare supposedly…

Large-scale international assessments, such as PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) or PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), have heightened interest in the comparative analysis of factors influencing the formation of skills and their change over time. However, such comparison has been hindered…

This article takes a critical comparative approach to examining autonomous schooling in the United States and Australia. Amid the market imperatives currently driving education priorities, its focus is on how autonomy can be mobilized in ways that preserve the integrity of public education. Through reference to key debates and research about…

This study developed a framework that compares the content and purposes of "federal" level European Union (EU) and United States (US) e-learning policy to ascertain trends, patterns, and points of convergence and divergence across the years 1994-2010. It reveals that the EU and US are applying similar rhetoric for policy framing,…

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…

For years social science researchers have bemoaned their lack of impact on educational policy. The general view is that policy makers respond to urgent problems with ad hoc solutions and without evidence of what works. It has also become fashionable among comparativists to argue that little learning occurs at the local level but that innovations…

Education has been featured prominently in recent election campaigns in different countries. This article explains this observation by the idea of a world culture and the global institutionalization of education. It compares party manifestors of 25 OECD countries from 1946 onward, analyzing how education developed in election campaigns over time…

Gender parity in education is a goal for national governments and international organizations. The case of Mexico, along with some of its neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, is particularly interesting given its current gender parity in terms of entrance into primary school and female advantage in enrollment in secondary…

The study of policy in comparative education has been approached using methods associated with the principal social science disciplines that have informed the field since its inception. In particular, the disciplines of history, political science, sociology, and anthropology have had a significant influence on determining the acceptable methods…

This article contributes to the understanding of children's perspectives by summarizing and comparing the thematic results of oral histories of Eastern European and German survivors of World War II and Afghan survivors of the post-1979 Afghanistan armed conflict. Twenty-seven participants in this study shared their memories of learning during each…

The purpose of this article is to analyze a number of Greek higher education reforms in comparative perspective. Emphasis will be placed on the rationale of the state's policies in creating the nonuniversity sector within higher education. The case of Greece will be compared to the cases of France and Germany because approximately the same reforms…

This paper sought to demonstrate that the framework guiding educational research must be modified to stress the selection of mutual areas of educational concern from a cross-national perspective and the use of valuative premises based on a comparative analysis of Soviet and American education. (Author/RK)

This article explores some of the conceptual and strategic problems of truly comparative research. Addressing the study of national educational policies, the author considers the uses of theory in defining units of analysis and compares the costs and utility of research strategies based on differing compositions within the research team.…

Shows how the concept of legitimacy and, in particular, the theoretical construct of compensatory legitimation as a determinant of policy strategies may be useful for the comparative analysis of educational policy in advanced capitalist societies. Uses examples of educational policy in the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States. (BRR)