This article examines the intertwining and evolution of neoliberal and nationalist discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao, arguing that their combination reveals the dual layers of political rationality in the dynamics of higher education policymaking. It suggests a move towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics, marked by…

This article argues that the worlds which comparative education has explored and is exploring are characterised by three main political patterns. The first and oldest is the competitive nation-state as the starting point of the comparison, an educationalised nation-state, one whose relative global strength in economy and military prowess is…

This study explores the narration of China as a nation in history education in two regions -- mainland China and Hong Kong -- that share cultural roots but different socio-political contexts. Inductive analysis of data from junior-secondary Chinese history textbooks used in the regions in the late 2010s revealed that whereas mainland China's…

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 aims to show the value of the concept of policy trajectory to compare, from a long-term perspective, the transformations of education policies in the context of globalisation. After discussing the scope and limitations of the analyses of the concept in the literature -- descriptive, sequential, metaphorical and building on the works…

How and why do some ideas attain agenda status while others do not? This paper seeks to explore these questions in the context of the policy changes observed in European education policy. By drawing from the literature on agenda-setting and employing process tracing, the paper develops a theoretical argument to investigate the causal mechanisms…

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.…

Kosovo introduced two major curriculum reforms over the past 20 years -- in 2001 and 2011 -- each aiming to bring education closer to international trends. Simultaneously, Kosovo underwent major political, social, and cultural changes after the war in 1999, and the declaration of independence in 2008. This article relies on document analysis and…

The aim of the article is to investigate the profile of comparative education in Italy, highlighting those elements that have characterised its development in relation to the cultural and political features of the country. This approach inevitably involves the comparison of Italy's specific particularities to those of other countries in the north…

This article illustrates and discusses some elements of the "problematique" 'Southern Europe'. The themes stressed include its configuration and the criteria for its conceptualisation. A number of ways to think about 'Southern Europe are discussed -- of course with particular emphasis on the development and theoretical elaboration of…

In this paper I argue for a necessary -- and possible -- paradigmatic shift in early childhood scholarship that embraces multiplicity, diversity, ambiguity, uncertainty and shared situated knowledge creation in response to a profoundly changed global context. The contours of the new paradigm are already emerging as three interconnected…

The development of the modern nation-state was an inherently centralising process. Education policy and the institutionalisation of mass public schooling played a key role in this process, facilitating industrialisation and the generation of mass loyalty toward the state. In almost all federal systems, however, education policy remained an…

International organisations facilitated the spread of competency-based reforms around the world. Accepting at face value correlations between students' performance on international assessments, such as PISA, and nations' economic development, reformers in different countries began to adopt competency-based standards to improve the quality of…

The aim of this article is to explore the ways educational transitions, i.e. student dropout and early school leaving (ESL), are understood and governed in the contemporary Greek sociopolitical context that is dominated by a persistent economic crisis. Drawing upon the residual nature of the Greek welfare state the paper examines the shifts in the…

This article combines the perspective of transnational transfer with contributions from social theory and historical sociology -- specifically the Luhmannian concept of social 'inclusion'. In doing so, this article reconstructs a historical case regarding the conflicting implementation of universal conscription and compulsory schooling in Chile in…