Parents evaluate the reputations of the schools when making judgements about their desirability. They try to approximate the quality of schools and the social environment and contrast those with their hopes and fears concerning their child's education. We aim to clarify how the reputations of schools are constructed in Finland and Chile and what…

We apply semi-structured interviews to conceptualise perceptions of global citizenship among teachers at an international school and teachers at a local public school in Israel, revealing discrepancies between theory and practice in global citizenship education (GCE). We find that teachers perceive global citizenship differently along three major…

As primary school enrolment rates in Rwanda near ubiquity, completion rates remain low and repetition rates remain high. This study investigates the impact of the "hidden costs" of schooling in the context of Rwanda's fee-free education policy. Using a social-science case study, focus groups and interviews were undertaken with 200…

Factors leading to successful professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely discussed in the West, but little is known about how/whether teachers' beliefs contribute to PLCs in the Chinese context. This qualitative case study aimed to investigate teachers' beliefs about teacher learning in PLCs and their influence on collegial learning…

This report documents and compares two cases of pre-service elementary teachers' beliefs about democracy and education for democracy in the USA and Bosnia and Herzegovina along with contextual factors influencing the similarities and differences among these beliefs. Findings suggest that US pre-service elementary teachers have a self-proclaimed…

There is little research in the developing countries of South East Asia on the effectiveness of bilingual education programmes that use first language instruction for ethnic minority children. This study investigated the effectiveness of a bilingual education programme involving ethnic minority children in Cambodia by comparing their performance…

Studies to date show how low-fee private (LFP) schools, including unrecognised ones, have gained practical legitimacy and continue to increase in number. However, little explanation is offered regarding the legal legitimacy of such unrecognised LFP schools. This paper intends to fill this gap by examining the legal legitimacy of unrecognised…

This article reports the findings of a comparative study of teaching in Denmark and England. Its broader aim is to help develop an approach for comparing pedagogy. Lesson observations and interviews identified the range of goals towards which teachers in each country worked and the actions these prompted. These were clustered using the lens of…

This study examines the higher education experience among Palestinian Arab females in two national spaces and seeks to determine whether studying at an Arab institution of higher learning in a nearby Arab country can alleviate the emotional and economic difficulties that affect Palestinian women at Israeli universities. What can institutions of…

This article analyses school systems for two of Ukraine's minorities, the Hungarians and the Crimean Tatars with the aim of assessing their success in promoting ethnocultural identity and social integration of the minority youth. I demonstrate that the exclusive instruction in Hungarian ensures the reproduction of group language knowledge and…

The purpose of the present research was to study gender inequality in British and German universities. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with female academics in each country (UK, N = 40; Germany, N = 47). A generational difference of attitude was perceived in academe, with the younger generation clearly more strategic in career…

Since the mid-1990s, the concept of professional learning communities has arisen in the education field in the West, aiming to improve teachers' professional competency by using collaborative approaches. Western studies indicate that these strategies help teachers achieve professional growth. Schools in China have had a long history of enhancing…

This paper suggests the need for a critical analysis of the nationalization of mourning and its educational implications, especially in conflict-ridden areas. Our thoughts are grounded in a comparative study on mourning that has been conducted as part of our long-standing ethnographic research in schools in Cyprus and Israel during the last 10…

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,…

This article critically reflects upon the "divides" among actors within two currently popular education policies in low-income countries: decentralisation and Universal Primary Education (UPE). Current literatures suggest that the existing decentralisation framework tends to overlook the "divides" among actors that often impede…