The article offers an interpretation of comparative education as an episteme that is entangled with international relations. It does so by seeking to extract past and present forms and patterns of comparative educational thought and action from the three main traditions of international relations, namely: realism, rationalism and revolutionism. It…

Conventional approaches to ethics in comparative and international educational research often entail researchers seeking institutional ethics approval; attempting to manage fieldwork's practical ethical dilemmas using institutional and disciplinary protocols; and 'writing up' methodology, primarily an account of the institutional ethics approval…

This article provides an overview of the politics of education as they affect regions and communities on the periphery of the People's Republic of China. Drawing on the articles in this special issue of Comparative Education, it analyses tensions related to the attempted imposition of Bejing's homogenising and totalising vision of Chineseness…

In comparative education, words like 'culture' and 'foreign' are used often early on to determine issues, but they soon become subjected to individual national contexts. The world is then professionally sliced into bits of 'area expertise'. Wonderment at the multiple cultures of the world diminishes. In the post-war reconstruction period…

For activists, scholars, and thinkers, the current state of our hyperpolitical global landscape can be daunting, especially as we consider engaging and responding to the growing political vitriol and hyperbole of our times. Over the past few years, I have wondered a great deal about how to sustain idealism during troubled times in a field such as…

Based on the authors' wide reading in the field, this article suggests the notion of the narrative as a fitting and meaningful way of conceptualising and mapping the field of comparative education. Four prominent narratives can be identified in not only the field of comparative education (and the scholarly discourse on education) but also the…

Educational authorities across countries are concerned to promote the well-being of their children. We discuss the approach that two systems, China and New Zealand, have adopted to support the development of well-being. The Chinese system has roots in the Confucian education tradition, Westernization Movement, and Soviet education lessons. It is…

This short article notes the disruption to public examinations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdowns. This provides a context to examine the way normreferencing controls the distribution of grades in England's test and examination system. This is viewed as 'the elephant in the exam room', something accepted, normalisedand hidden…

In the Czech Republic there has been a growing interest in education in nature ["výchova v prírode"] in connection with accreditation as a field of study. Outdoor experiential educator Jan Neuman, who died in April 2021, was instrumental in the development and formalisation of Czech education in nature programmes over the past 50 years.…

The establishment of China's modern academic system was shaped by the interaction of internal (traditional) elements and external (Western) forces. Therefore, China and Western countries display many similarities in their academic systems. As with its Western counterpart, China's modern academic system is characterized by disciplined knowledge,…

The article tackles the question, how to provide students with a comparative orientation to public administration. We eschew the older tradition of comparing major systems such British parliamentary system or French bureaucratic approaches to organizations' structure. Rather, we seek to understand public administration in countries with different…

The international situation of history didactics as an academic discipline is characterized by the fact that many basic disciplinary concepts often differ considerably: The same or similar terms denote different concepts or vice versa comparable concepts not only have various names but also hold different positions in the respective disciplinary…

Purpose: Digital technologies can enable engagement online as well as in physical infrastructures like large lecture theatres. Avoiding a tech-first approach to curriculum design, this article reviews a key resource for the use of a pedagogy-first, co-design approach in a specific instance of developing curriculum for connected learning at scale.…

The COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying existing problems of economic asymmetry, and other injustices, between and within countries and regions around the world. It is thus imperative that sociological studies of education document its socio-cultural implications in different locations and on different scales. It is equally imperative that such…

Within the framework of comparative education studies, this article discusses the process of borrowing and implementing Complex Instruction (CI) in Europe, focusing on three different multicultural and heterogeneous educational contexts in Italy: five primary schools, a Master academic teaching course, and a first literacy course for migrant…