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…

Tibetan Buddhism has played a shifting role in the official identity discourse of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. Established for the administration of Tibet, Mongolia, and other frontier regions in 1928, the ROC's Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC) continued research and publication activity on Taiwan (1949-2017). A major…

The Programme for International Student Assessment has become an important policy tool that has affected educational practices in many countries. Despite some remarkable results in PISA's global ranking tables from China's Eastern provinces, China's distinctive policy response has not been well documented or understood. We systematically examine…

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…

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…

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 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…

Comparative education as a field of study in universities (and "comparative education" as practised by nineteenth-century administrators of education in Canada, England, France and the USA) has always addressed the theme of "transfer": that is, the movement of educational ideas, principles and practices, and institutions and…

This piece concerns the relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom over the course of some 170-180 years from the early/mid-1800s to the present. It is argued that, despite the expectations of nationalists such as Timothy Corcoran, writing in the immediate aftermath of independence, to whom it seemed both desirable and inevitable that…

Despite a long history of post-independence aid to education, Kenya's relationships with overseas donors have, until recently, been markedly fractious. Donors' concerns about transparency and corruption, in the context of a political regime which became increasingly authoritarian, led to sharp reductions in aid to Kenyan education during the…

In the last half decade, a rising literature has focused on the idea that processes of economic, political and social globalization require analysis in terms of governance at the global level. It is argued in this article that emerging forms of global governance have produced significant challenges to conventional conceptions of international…

Little research has examined public diplomacy as a comparative education issue, particularly regarding social-psychological, economic and political fears or personal and national insecurities. This paper discusses American public diplomacy as a mostly Cold War strategy adapted to post-9/11 national security interests, fears and desires. It further…

The impact on educational analysis of mainstream international relations (IR) theories is yet to realize its full potential. The problem of education in relation to the construction of world order is considered in relation to core developments in IR theory since the Second World War. In particular, the global architecture of education is seen as a…