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COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION: SURVEY OF AN INFINITE FIELD

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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON EDUCATION & SOCIETY

Series Editor: Alexander W. Wiseman

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Series Editor from Volume 11: Alexander W. Wiseman

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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON EDUCATION AND SOCIETY Volume 36

COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION: SURVEY OF AN INFINITE FIELD

EDITED BY:

CHARL COETZEE WOLHUTER

North-West University, South Africa

ALEXANDER W. WISEMAN

Texas Tech University, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2019

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ISBN: 978-1-78743-391-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-461-5 (Epub)

ISSN: 1479-3679 (Series)

Contents

About the Contributors

Luis Enrique Aguilhar holds a Doctorate in Education and is a Titular Professor of the School of Education of the State University of Campinas – UNICAMP of undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate studies. He holds a master’s in Education Technology by the University of Salamanca and Organization of Ibero-American States – OIE – Spain. He is a Researcher and Leader of the Laboratory of Public Policies and Educational Planning (LaPPlanE/Unicamp), founder of the Ibero-American Observatory of Comparative Studies in Education (OIECE). He was the Head of Department, a Postgraduation Coordinator, and a Vice-President of the Central Post-Graduation Commission of UNICAMP, a Member of the Evaluation Committee of Coordination of Improvement of Higher Level Personnel (CAPES), and a Consultant of many financial agencies as well as a Consultant and a Member of the Editorial Committee of periodic scientific reports of the area. He is the President of the Brazilian Society of Comparative Education – SBEC. He acts in the design and elaboration of training plans and teaching for national teachers, managers of municipal, state and federal networks of education, and scientific management (interinstitutional national and international). His scientific production is disseminated in the areas of educational systems administration, educational planning, public policy, evaluation, and comparative educational policy studies.

Ana Elisa Spaolonzi Queiroz Assis holds a bachelor’s degree in Pedagogy from Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas – PUC-Campinas (2004), a master’s degree in Education from PUC-Campinas (2007), a law degree from PUC-Campinas (2009), a doctorate in Education from Campinas State University – UNICAMP (2012), and a post-doctorate in Education from the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA). She is a Professor of undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Law of the South of Minas Gerais (FDSM) and the School of Education of UNICAMP, a Researcher and Leader of the Laboratory of Public Policies and Fundamental Rights (LabDirF/FDSM), as well as a Researcher and a Vice-leader of the Laboratory of Public Policies and Educational Planning (LaPPlanE/UNICAMP), and the General Secretary of the Brazilian Society of Comparative Education – SBEC. She is an Associate Coordinator of the Pedagogy Course of FE/UNICAMP (2016–2017). In 2014, she was a Visiting Professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences – FLACSO/Argentina, together with the Latin American Studies Area (ADELA), as well as in the University Pedagogy and Didactics Unit at Universidad de Chile in 2016. She has published 24 articles, 5 books, and 21 book chapters, nationally and internationally.

Abdullah Bagci is a Lecturer at Hacettepe University, Turkey. He obtained his MS degree in the Educational Administration and Planning Program at Middle East Technical University and is currently a PhD student in the Educational Administration and Policy Department of Ankara University, Turkey. His research focus is on comparative education and higher education.

Poonam Batra is a Professor at the Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi, India. Areas of professional focus include public policy in education, curriculum and pedagogy, teacher education, and gender studies. Recent research examines the relationship between poverty and quality education in an era of market-based reforms and conceptions of teacher agency.

Roger Chao, Jr., is an International Education Development Consultant. He was formerly the Higher Education Specialist for UNESCO Myanmar and has been engaged in various international education related projects with UNESCO, UNICEF, and is an Expert in higher education for the European Commission. These include writing the technical report on the role and effectiveness of the Regional Recognition Conventions in the Asia and Pacific for UNESCO Paris and undertaking External Peer Review of the University of Liberal Arts – Bangladesh as part of the World Bank Higher Education Quality Enhancement Program. He has a PhD from City University of Hong Kong, an MA in Lifelong Learning: Policy and Management from a consortium composed of the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, University of Deusto and the Institute of Education, London. He also has an MEd in Mathematics from the University of the Philippines. His research interests include higher education policy and reforms, comparative and international education, education policy, quality assurance, lifelong learning, internationalization of higher education, and refugee education.

Óscar Espinoza is an Associate Researcher at the Center of Advanced Studies at Universidad de Playa Ancha. He is also a Researcher at the Center of Comparative Educational Policies at University Diego Portales and in the Interdisciplinary Program of Educational Research (PIIE). He also works as a Consultant for selected Chilean universities. In the past, he has worked in many research projects funded by international agencies (e.g., USAID, UNESCO, World Bank, UNDP, Ford Foundation, and the Organization of Iberoamerican States) and national agencies (Ministry of Education, National Commission of Science and Technological Research, and the National Council for the Innovation and Competitiveness) on issues associated with access, equity, quality assurance, academic performance, accreditation, management, and higher education policies. He is the author of more than a 100 publications, including 10 books, 60 book chapters, and 75 articles. He holds an EdD in Policy, Planning, and Evaluation in Education from the University of Pittsburgh (USA).

Carmen-María Fernández-García, PhD, is a Professor at the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She received her doctorate in education, focusing on Comparative Education, from the same university. Her thesis was awarded as Extraordinary PhD Prize at the University of Oviedo in 2003. Additionally, she has received research grants from the Spanish Ministry of Education. Her major research interests involve secondary education, teaching and teacher education, learning and instruction, and Comparative Education. She has been a Co-investigator of various Spanish national projects including self-efficacy, gender and education, and parental education. Currently she is joining an international project investigating teaching behavior and student outcomes across countries, the ICALT3 Project coordinated by the University of Groningen. She is also a Reviewer of various journals including Spanish Comparative Education Review and Culture and Education, among others.

Teodora Genova is an English language Lecturer at the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies (Sofia, Bulgaria). She has conducted her doctoral research on the Nordic representatives’ contribution to the field of Comparative and International Education. She has been a member of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES) since 2014 and currently is its Assistant Conference Chair. Some of her publications include “Current Situation and Reforms Making Way for Future Positive Developments in the National Education System of Bulgaria: an Overview” (2015), “Torsten Husén, a Co-founder and the Chairman of IEA from 1962 to 1978” (2015), “Presentation of Marc-Antoine Jullien’s Work in Bulgarian Comparative Education Textbooks” (2016), co-authored with Nikolay Popov, among others.

Jorge M. Gorostiaga, PhD, is a Full Professor and Director of the Master’s Program in Educational Management at Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and a Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research, Argentina. He received his PhD in Social and Comparative Analysis in Education (University of Pittsburgh). He is a Co-editor of the Journal of Theoretical and Epistemological Studies on Education Policy. He also teaches at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina. His research interests focus on comparative analysis of education reform in Latin America; relationships between knowledge and education policy; and equity issues in secondary and higher education.

Quan Gu is a PhD candidate in the Education Department of East China Normal Universal. Her research interests include human resource management in public universities, faculty salary system, and faculty performance management. Her dissertation research focuses on a comparative study of the faculty salary systems between China and the United States. She has worked in the financial industry for many years, where she has led trainings on human resource management with a focus on how to improve the intrinsic ability and working skills of employees at different position levels.

Annette T. Han is a PhD student in the Administrative and Policy Studies Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Her primary research interests include human capital development as a driver of economic growth in developing countries, public and educational policies, education reform such as educational privatization, low-cost private school, and school choice. Her goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between equality in quality education and the economic and social welfare development in low- and middle-income countries. She has worked on several research projects, both in the United States and internationally, to investigate the effects of internationalization and globalization on educational reform and student outcomes.

Midori Hasegawa was born in Japan and received her BA degree from Hiroshima Women’s College in Hiroshima, Japan in 1989. She also received teaching certification for kindergarten through Grade 6 from the Hiroshima Prefecture. She began her teaching career in April 1989 and devoted herself to teaching in public and national elementary schools for 23 years in Hiroshima. Her research field was Reading Literacy. She contributed to research studies entitled “Developing Curriculum and Strategies for Teaching and Assessment for Reading Literacy” (2007–2009) and “Developing Global Communication Skills by introducing Book Club Teaching Strategies” (2010–2012). The Primary Investigator for both research studies was Mr Arimoto of the reading literacy group in the Ministry of Education in Japan and was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKEN, 40241228, and 22330254, respectively). She earned a master’s degree in education from Chatham University and is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Language, Literacy, and Culture/Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh.

Miranda L. Hogsett is an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher and researcher with a master’s degree in teaching ESOL from the University of Maryland. Her research and curriculum development projects center on equity, social justice, and constructively navigating cultural difference in education settings. She has taught in the United States, Kenya, Finland, South Korea, and Israel/Palestine. During her PhD coursework, she taught as an Adjunct Professor in Chatham University’s international program and completed research projects centered on experiential and transformative learning, refugee issues, and teaching sensitive topics. She currently serves as the Academic Specialist with international students at NC State University’s University Performance Program, and is the Education Consultant for Global Minds for-Youth, By-Youth International NGO. She is expected to finish her PhD in social and comparative analysis in education from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019.

W. James Jacob is currently the Vice President of Innovation and International at Collaborative Brain Trust. He has held several Senior Higher Education Leadership positions, including as a Leadership Faculty Member and the Director of the Institute for International Studies in Education at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a results-oriented Senior Manager and Researcher specializing in strategic planning, quality assurance, professional development, community engagement, and change management. He is the Co-editor of two book series related to the development of comparative, international, and development education (CIDE) scholarship: International and Development Education (Palgrave Macmillan) and Pittsburgh Studies in Comparative and International Education (Brill | Sense). He has written extensively on CIDE topics with an emphasis on higher education. He holds master’s degrees in Organizational Behavior (Marriott School of Management) and International Development (Kennedy Center for International Studies) from Brigham Young University and a PhD in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lili Jia has worked as an Associate Professor in the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance in China since 2008. She completed her PhD in Higher Education from East China Normal University in 2008 and her master’s in Comparative and International Education from Beijing Normal University. Her research focuses on quality assurance in higher education, the development of academic organizations, and comparative higher education, especially on professional accreditation in higher education. She has published several academic papers on these topics and has completed a series of advisory reports for policy-makers at her university. Her doctoral dissertation has been nominated as the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Higher Education organized by the Higher Education Academy of China (CAHE) in 2010 and was subsequently published in 2013. Additionally, she has led two national research projects on quality assurance in higher education sponsored by the Ministry of Education in China in 2010 and 2012. She made an intensive study on professional accreditation in higher education between China and the United States as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh Institute for International Studies in Education from 2015 to 2016.

Lin Jiang is a Lecturer at Liaoning Police College, China. She received her PhD degree at Dalian University of Technology, China. She served as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Studies in Education, University of Pittsburgh from 2015 to 2016. Her research focuses on college students’ development, especially on professional identity development and skills training.

Seu’ula Johansson-Fua is the Director of the Institute of Education and the Tonga Campus at the University of the South Pacific. She is an educational researcher with over 15 years of experience working in the educational development space in the Pacific. Seu’ula was born and raised in Tonga and received her undergraduate qualifications from the University of Waikato, New Zealand. As a Commonwealth scholar she studied towards her Master of Education and later her PhD in Educational Administration at the University of Toronto, Canada. As Director of the Institute of Education, Seu’ula is the principal conference convener for the Vaka Pasifiki Education Conference.

Aisi Li, DPhil, is an Assistant Professor at Nazarbayev University’s Graduate School of Education. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Sichuan University, China. She then studied MSc in Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford. She received her DPhil in Educational Studies from the University of Oxford in 2012. She specializes in the internationalization of higher education both from a historical and contemporary perspective. She has been a Team Member investigating internationalization of higher education in Kazakhstan since 2014, and her recent project takes a special interest in how China’s “One Belt One Road” strategy impacts higher education in Central Asia.

Xiufang Ma is an Associate Professor in the School of Educational Information Technology, South China Normal University, China. Her main research interests focus on massive open online courses (i.e., MOOCs) for teacher’s professional development, micro-video courses, and interaction behavior analyses between teachers and students. Her additional work experience includes (1) developed demonstration courses based on the Blackboard platform for “Information Technology Blackboard (Beijing) Co., Ltd,” (2) research and practice of flipped classrooms, and (3) construction and application of individual learning environments.

María-Jesús Martínez-Usarralde, PhD, is a Professor at Department of Comparative Education and History of Education of the Faculty of Education at the University of Valencia (Spain). She obtained a PhD in Philosophy and Education from the University of Valencia, Special Doctoral Award in Philosophy and Education (2000). Her research interests focus on the topics of Comparative and International Education, Cooperation for Development and Education, Immigrant Education and intercultural issues as mediation, as well as methodologies of learning at university like the Service Learning and its relation with Social Responsibility. She has been a Visitor Researcher at Institute of Education (London), Instituto de Investigación y Planificación Educativa (IIPE) of UNESCO (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and University de Concepción (UDeC) (Chile) and has won two National Prizes – Manuel Castillo Prize (2011) and Ángel González Prize (2016) – with two articles related to Cooperation for Development in Education and Comparative Education, respectively.

Alexandra McCormick is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work. She is a pre-service teacher educator, and coordinates Masters programs and units in International Development and in International Education, with prior experience teaching internationally in NGOs, private organisations and schools. Alex moved to Sydney in 2002 to join family who had migrated from Kenya, Mauritius and Reunion Island and, more recently, England, where she was born. A move to Bermuda in her infancy, for almost a decade, was followed by several more, with years spent in the US and then the UK, and undergraduate study in Norwich and Paris. Alex undertook her Masters in International Studies and PhD in Comparative and International Education in Sydney. Her research into multi-scalar education policy processes includes Australian contexts, the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia, in which she employs critical globalisation and decolonial perspectives. Alex is co-founder of the University of Sydney’s Comparative and International Education (CoInEd) research network and former Vice President of the Oceania Comparative and International Education Society (OCIES), and she sits on the Editorial Board for its flagship journal, the International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives.

Kwabena Dei Ofori-Attah is an Associate Professor of Education at Central State University, Wilberforce, OH. He is a Research Fellow for the African Educational Research Network. In this capacity, he works with international students all over the world. The African Educational Research Network publishes an online journal, The African Symposium. He was the Founder and Managing-Editor for the journal for over five years. Also, he is a Member for the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). The COL is an intergovernmental organization created by the Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources, and technologies. COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training. In 2008, he published a book, Going to School in the Middle East and North Africa. He has also published several articles in refereed journals, several book chapters, and in the Encyclopedia of Education (2004).

Nikolay Popov, PhD, is a Professor of Comparative Education at Sofia University, Bulgaria. He has two doctorates in Comparative Education – PhD (1990) and Dr habil. (2002). All his teaching and research activities have been focused on the history, theory, and practice of Comparative Education. He has conducted comparative studies on management, finance, structures, teacher training, education laws, school curricula, and books in various countries. He is the author of 25 books and 140 articles and chapters on Education in Bulgaria and Comparative Education.

Lorraine Pe Symaco is a Professor under the ZJU100 program of Zhejiang University (ZJU), China. She was the Founder and the Director of the Centre for Research in International and Comparative Education and the UNESCO Chair in International and Comparative Educational Research with special reference to South East Asia at the University of Malaya, Malaysia.

David A. Turner, PhD, is a Professor emeritus at the University of South Wales and a Professor at the Institute for International and Comparative Education at Beijing Normal University. He was a High School Science Teacher before becoming a teacher in higher education, and has a long-standing interest in the history and philosophy of science, especially as it relates to comparative and international studies of education. This interest was first stimulated by studying for a master’s degree at the University of London, Institute of Education, a program taught by some of the key theorists of comparative education, including Robert Cowen, Brian Holmes, and Edmund King.

Julio Luis Méndez Vergara is a Colombian citizen who was born in the city of Sincelejo, in northern Colombia, where he currently lives. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English language from the Universidad de Córdoba, where he was awarded distinction for his meritorious research project based on vocabulary learning. In 2016, he was a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for International Studies in Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and he has worked within the field of university teaching thereafter. He currently works as a Part-time Lecturer in two universities in his hometown, namely Corporación Universitaria del Caribe (CECAR) and the Universidad de Sucre, where he has been mainly in charge of the teaching of English. Furthermore, he has attended some international congresses and scientific events in his country and he has participated as a presenter in few of them.

Shuo Wang is serving as an Assistant Research Fellow at the Higher Education Evaluation Center of the China Ministry of Education. He specializes in higher education accountability, higher education quality assurance and comparative higher education. He obtained his PhD at Beijing Normal University. He also served as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh Institute for International Studies in Education from 2015 to 2016.

Xueshuang Wang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at Beijing Sport University, China. She received three degrees from Beijing Normal University, namely a bachelor’s degree in the education program and master’s and doctoral degrees in the International and Comparative Education Program at the Institute of International and Comparative Education. She was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh Institute for International Studies in Education from September 2015 to November 2016. She worked as a Program Coordinator at the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb, Croatia from September 2018 to March 2019. Her research interests mainly focus on international and comparative education, comparative physical education, and graduate education.

Charl Wolhuter studied at the University of Johannesburg, the University of Pretoria, the University of South Africa and the University of Stellenbosch. His doctorate was awarded in Comparative Education at the University of Stellenbosch. He is a former junior lecturer in the Department of History of Education and Comparative Education at the University of Pretoria and a former senior lecturer in the Department of History of Education and Comparative Education at the University of Zululand. Currently he is Comparative and International Education Professor at North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa. He has been Visiting Professor at Brock University, Canada; Mount Union University, Ohio, United States of America; the University of Crete, Greece; The University of Queensland, Australia; Beijing Normal University, China; Boris Grinchenko University, Ukraine; Zhengzhou University, China; Canterbury Christ University, United Kingdom; the University of Namibia; the University of Modena and Reggio Emilio, Italy; and the Education University of Hong Kong. He is the author of many books and articles on Comparative and International Education, and History of Education.

Shangmou Xu is a PhD student in the Department of Administrative and Policy Study, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh. He also serves as a Graduate Student Assistant in the Department of Psychology in Education, School of Education. He earned a master’s of Education Degree at the University of Pittsburgh and a BSc in Chemistry at Nanjing University, China. His research interests include school sector effect, especially under the context of STEM education, teacher effectiveness, and secondary school STEM curriculum using quantitative research methods.

Huiyuan Ye is a Research Analyst of Learning Science and Workforce Insights at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). He received his BA and MA degrees in English from Shanghai International Studies University in China and his EdD degree in Higher Education Management from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining SNHU, he was a Senior Program Coordinator of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for International Studies in Education for five years. He has a research publication record on comparative, international, and development education as well as experience working with bilateral and multilateral development organizations from around the world. His current research interests focus on disruptive innovation, competency-based education, workforce development, and impact measurement.

Series Editor Biography

Alexander W. Wiseman, PhD, is a Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. He holds a dual-degree PhD in Comparative & International Education and Educational Theory & Policy from Pennsylvania State University, an MA in International Comparative Education from Stanford University, an MA in Education from The University of Tulsa, and a BA in Letters from the University of Oklahoma. He conducts internationally comparative educational research using large-scale education datasets on math and science education, information and communication technology (ICT), teacher preparation, professional development and curriculum as well as school principal’s instructional leadership activity, and is the author of many research-to-practice articles and books. He serves as Senior Editor of the online journal FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education, Series Editor for the International Perspectives on Education and Society volume series (Emerald Publishing), and Editor of the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education (Emerald Publishing).

Preface

The field of comparative and international education has developed through periods of “comparative isolation” (Ross, Post, & Farrell, 1995, p. 4), regional variation (this volume), diversification across units of analysis and topics of research (Bray & Thomas, 1995), and “osmosis,” which speaks to a dialectic of intersection and distinction in related work across professional and scholarly boundaries (Davidson, Park, Dzotsenidze, Okogbue, & Wiseman, 2019). However, none have spoken about the cohesiveness or singularity of comparative and international education. It is a scholarly field and a professional area that is both blessed and cursed with widespread diversity in topical focus, methodology, theoretical framework, practical implementation, regional and cultural context, and educational impact. This volume of the International Perspectives on Education and Society series titled, Comparative and International Education: Survey of an Infinite Field, focuses on the scope and diversity of the field of comparative and international education.

Previous volumes in the series have emphasized the wide scope and broad diversity in the field of comparative and international education (e.g., see the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) and have discussed the challenges of maintaining and professionalizing a field that is measurably and explicitly permeable by related fields and disciplines. The scope and diversity of an “infinite” field are by definition limitless, but there are key categories that can be considered. This volume emphasizes the regional variations in comparative and international education, and focuses predominantly on the more scholarly (i.e., more “comparative” and less “international,” see Epstein, 1994) side of the field. But, within the comparative side there are also units of analysis, methodology, theoretical framework, research topics, and historical development among others.

A regional focus on the diversity and scope of comparative and international education provides a productive (albeit focused) lens on the infiniteness of the field. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the difficulties of a singular approach to discussing what comparative education means and how it is implemented. As such, the chapters each demonstrate the diversity of approaches to comparative and international education, and in particular the ways that cultural and social context are as much a contributing factor to that diversity as are the different practical educational issues in each region or community. Turner’s opening chapter asks the key question: “What is comparative education?” And, all the following chapters provide their own answers to that question; sometimes explicitly and other times as part of an assumed comparative education approach. There is little discussion of the “international” in comparative and international education, but rather a clearer emphasis on the comparative.

What this volume contributes to the body of work on comparative and international education is further evidence of the historical development of comparative and international education as a field, and of the diversity that occurs even within traditionally defined divisions along regional or geographic lines. This is, in fact, what the “international” component of comparative and international education is often assumed to represent: variation in education across national boundaries. In many ways, this is a somewhat old-fashioned approach to the “international” component because boundaries among educational systems, practices, and expectations are less driven by regional variation or national culture than they are by social network (which can be global) or linguistic diaspora (which can also be global). There is also a conflict about who or what the prime movers of comparative and international education are. National histories tend to emphasize the influence of specific national individuals or organizations that pushed for intranational as much as international educational comparisons. Yet, there is no evidence that comparative education emerged spontaneously or independently in any nation or region. Instead, there is ample evidence that global factors have consistently and historically led to the emergence of comparative and international education in individual countries, systems, and communities.

In fact, the origin of comparative and international education in most regions is a combination of international development efforts, political and social resistance, and an ameliorating or technical–rational approach to borrowing “best practices” from abroad. Each of the chapters in this volume addressing the historicity of comparative and international education in a specific region or country, in fact, refer at some point to broader global factors, which laid the foundation or provided the context for the intranational development of comparative and international education. The challenge, in fact, for many chapter authors in this volume is how to synthesize or summarize a history of the development of comparative and international education across regions, cultures, nations, and societies. As is usual in these kinds of discussions, the strength of diversity is an ever present point, but at some point diversity leads to divisions and irreconcilable differences. The challenge for this volume and others like it in this series has always been to redirect readers toward those factors that complement each other or unify research, scholarship, or professional activity under the moniker of “comparative and international education,” broadly speaking. This volume meets that challenge head on and succeeds in doing so.

Alexander W. Wiseman

Series Editor