An extensive literature has explored the influence of the OECD on school education policies globally, while their influence on higher education policies has been underexamined. This article addresses that void by analysing the internationalisation of higher education in Israel and South Korea. We suggest that joining the OECD provided political…

This article argues that since World War II, comparative education has worked in the service of two historic blocs: one focused on creating institutions and ideologies in support of internationalism and a second focused on containing the threat of communism. Both versions have supported and justified foreign intervention into domestic education…

Comparative education is a field with a tradition that dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The field has come a long way since the times when travellers sought educational experiences that could be applied in their places of origin; it has expanded across the world, though the rhythm of knowledge production varies significantly…

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.…

Why have regimes and societies that would otherwise argue for their distinctiveness and sovereign decision-making caught 'ranking fever' in HE? Why are they willing to give up their sovereignty in the field of HE, and why do they accept the requirement of homogeneity to succeed in global university rankings? This paradox is explored in the case of…

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…

Higher education (HE) scholarship often focuses on the so-called 'entrepreneurial' university as a consequence of new public management reforms. Simultaneously, the remarkable expansion of private HE is said to fragment, specialize, and diversify HE systems. Such diagnoses are misleading as they ignore wider environmental pressures and…

Comparative education was established in Greek universities in the 1980s, with the creation of pedagogical departments and two laboratories, and the publication of a journal. There was an early emphasis on education policy analysis, in terms of assumptions about the 'semi-peripherality' of Greece within Europe. Later, the emphasis shifted to what…

This study examined how hierarchical positions within the global field of higher education influence the selection of strategic priorities by universities in different parts of the world. The study particularly focused on universities' commitment to third missions as reflected in their strategic plans and compared to their global rankings. The…

It was not until the 1930s that comparative education, with the initiation of dedicated courses and programmes at universities in various countries, that the field became internationally recognised in its own right. And, it was not until the 1930s that the first internationally recognised journal in the field, the "International Education…

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:…

The age pattern of school entry reflects a complex social and empirical reality that is inadequately captured by a single number. Recognising these complexities in national and international research and policy discourse raises important but neglected questions around the identification of vulnerable groups, the relative value of pre-primary and…

Although scholars have examined the effects of global tests on national and regional educational governance, few researchers have studied their impact on education in the Arabian Gulf. This research fills the knowledge gap by studying the international spectacle of PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS results in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- two…

This paper interrogates the ways in which "reflexivity" has proliferated as a normative methodological discourse in the field of international and comparative education. We argue that the dominant approach to reflexivity foregrounds the standpoints of researchers and their subjects in a way that does not attend to the situated,…