UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI.…

This article examines how and why the US reconstructed Okinawa in Japan, with a focus on the theme of 'self' and 'others' in educational interaction. I argue that during the occupation of Okinawa, the US tried to detach Okinawa from Japan socio-culturally, using the historically based racial tensions between them by promoting the local 'Ryukyuan'…

Claims regarding Western neo-colonial domination over scholarship in Comparative and International Education (CIE) have recently commanded much attention -- for example in a 2017 special issue of the journal "Comparative Education Review" (CER) on the theme of 'contesting coloniality.' Stressing their marginal 'positionality,' the…

Recent research has focused either on the internationalisation of China's higher education (HE) as soft power, or on soft power with 'Chinese characteristics'. There is a paucity of research combining these two foci. This paper fills this gap by: (i) unravelling the meanings and features of the 'Chinese characteristics' embodied in the policies of…

The current process of globalisation has led to a convergence of international and Spanish concerns regarding teaching and research issues in the area of comparative education. Both in their teaching and their research work, the academics within the Spanish comparative community display a notable -- and typically Hispanic -- heterogeneity. This…

Whilst Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 has influenced education in various ways, major reforms perceived as promoting mainland control have been resisted. For two decades, Hong Kong's educational autonomy under the 'one country, two systems' formula was thus largely maintained. This changed radically with the response to the…

The present article addresses the issue of structuration of the field of Comparative Education in Portugal. The narrative is constructed at two levels, one of a more descriptive nature, the other more interpretative. In the first part of the text, the construction of a comparative imagination is addressed on the basis of four main points in time:…

This paper examines 126 research articles from three comparative education journals to chart the development of knowledge within comparative education on the Soviet Union and post-Soviet countries. Thematic, theoretical, discursive, and methodological aspects of scholarship are linked with changing geopolitical realities in a systematic analysis…

Interpreting modernisation and globalisation in East Asia as processes of Westernisation creates confusion and discomfort among some academics from the region. To illustrate why such discomfort occurs, this article explores the changes in the higher education systems of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China in terms of their "Chineseness"…

The article seeks to formulate a comparative framework that explains the uneven development of schooling in Cyprus and Singapore during the British colonial rule. It specifically focuses on the moment of transition to independence and on the role played by ideas and the interaction of ideas in the evolution of social institutions. The overall…

Several education hubs have emerged in Asia and the Middle East in recent years with a specific focus on cross-border higher education. Through considerable efforts in policy planning and generous funding, these hubs aim to transform a country or city into an eminent destination for education, research, and training. The inherent design of these…

Education is often prioritised by refugee children and families, as well as by their political representatives and international actors alike. This article explores the specificities of the Sahrawi refugee education system, focusing in particular on the nature, motivations and implications of Sahrawi refugee youths' educational migration to Cuba…

The paper examines education practice in India in terms of the division between indigenous cultures on the one hand, and the formal culture of learning and knowledge systems inherited from colonial times on the other. These "two Indias" are still reflected in the modern educational system in India, seen in the vast differences between…

Globalisation and convergence in educational policy worldwide has reinvigorated, while rendering more complex, the classic theme of educational transfer. Framed by this wider pursuit of new understandings of a changing transfer/context puzzle, this paper explores how an ethnographic "thick description" might complement and extend recent…

The purpose of this article is to analyse the nature of the global hegemonies in higher education. While anti-colonial thinkers describe the dominance of the Western paradigm as an oppression of indigenous culture and knowledge and as neo-colonialism in higher education, their arguments lead to such questions as how much self-determination do…