Since 2000, girls' education has been an increasingly high-profile concern in international development policy. At the same time, there has been a trend towards the greater production and reliance on quantitative data, indicators and targets in national and international education policy. Scholars have raised concerns about the rise of…

Over the past decade, the OECD has gradually shifted its governing mechanism from promoting 'best practices' based on comparative data on pupils' cognitive skills to actively advocating for individual and collective well-being as an "alternative" and "ideal future." This article focuses on the OECD's use of 'techno-scientific…

In the following article, we share our findings from the comparative analyses of 54 lifelong learning policy measures implemented in nine European countries, with a particular focus on their orientations, objectives, and solutions devised. Informed by the theoretical framework of Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA), we have further reasoned on the…

Kosovo introduced two major curriculum reforms over the past 20 years -- in 2001 and 2011 -- each aiming to bring education closer to international trends. Simultaneously, Kosovo underwent major political, social, and cultural changes after the war in 1999, and the declaration of independence in 2008. This article relies on document analysis and…

This article investigates the failure of introducing comprehensive schooling in Austria, one of few 'conservative' outliers in the European post-war reform trend where early selection survived reform attempts in the 1970s. In particular, the focus is on the most recent attempt to postpone tracking from the age of 10-14 in the wake of Austria's…

The global diffusion of outcome-based accountability in education is contested, with accounts of universal convergence being challenged by perspectives emphasising heterogeneity across different national or local contexts. This study uses data from PISA to explore, firstly, the spatial and temporal diffusion of accountability across OECD…

In the present study we provide an interpretation of a general narrative of transnational governance of higher education. All the elements of the narrative--competition, ranking autonomy and accountability--are visibly present in contemporary higher education policy agenda. We examine these not as separate ideas and practices but as an interlinked…

While technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is re-emerging on the agenda of many development agencies and governments of developing countries alike, there remains a serious lack of theoretically grounded literature on how skills formation systems in developing countries change over time, and how these transformations are…

The concepts of differentiation and profiling are cornerstones in discussions about the organisation of contemporary higher education systems, following the trends of massification and global competition. This contribution provides a system-level description and comparison of the German and Dutch higher education systems regarding these topics,…

Drawing from a range of secondary data sources, this paper succinctly overviews patterns of access to good-quality education in Turkey over the last 15 years. It also maps the policy context within which issues of access, quality and equity are examined. As a result of effective supply and demand side strategies, enrolment ratios beyond the…

This article presents the conceptual and methodological framework of a two-year comparative research project (2002-2004), funded by the University of Paisley. The study, entitled "Convergence or Divergence? Initial Teacher Education in Scotland and England", investigated initial teacher education (ITE) policy and practice in England and…

Attempts to delineate an area where comparative education can help inform policy, namely the interaction of educational systems in multi-national contexts, seeking to relate the discussion to the theme of the Third World Congress of Comparative Education, and paying particular attention to the oddly-neglected case of the various national systems…

A review of eight books on Latin American education, published after 1995, analyzes the process by which Latin American "discursive space" is constructed in the educational literature. Similarities in the principles dominating recent educational reforms and the main perspectives in the literature that "explain" these…

The author suggests that observing the difficulties and failures of plans and programs for educational development over the last two decades makes it easy to become a sceptic about the fact that the age of innocence underestimates the extent and complexity of the knowledge base needed for sound choices in educational policy. (KC)

Review of "Politics and Policy-Making in Israel's Education System" (Haim Gaziel); "Educational Advancement and Distributive Justice between Equality and Equity" (Reuven Kahane, editor); and "Exchanging Writing, Exchanging Cultures: Lessons in School Reform from the United States and Great Britain" (Sarah Warshauer…