Historically, education policy has frequently framed American Indians, a contested term long-used to describe peoples indigenous to the United States, through a deficit-lens as "other." While "CER" publishes research that looks at other countries as a point of analysis, rarely has it included articles that compare supposedly…

This article contributes to a growing body of research on global policy transfer and flows in education, arguing that a large number of such research has too often viewed nation-states as uniform policy containers, focusing mainly on national-level policy changes or using binary understandings of reform adaptation versus reform resistance.…

A recent study of student learning at three of Rwanda's most prestigious public universities has suggested that Rwandan students are not improving in their critical thinking ability during their time at university. This article reports on a series of faculty-level case studies, which were conducted at two of the participating institutions in order…

This article discusses admissions policies to higher education during the Communist regime in Bulgaria (1946-89). It argues that under the conditions of the Bulgarian Communist regime, admissions policies were not only a component of the higher education system--viewed as an institution--but part and parcel of the process through which power was…

This essay explores the role of UNESCO, the World Bank, and the US Agency for International Development as key international actors shaping teacher development in Palestine. The argument presented is that international influence, particularly through donor-funded projects, combined with limited capacity within the Ministry of Education and local…

This article aims to explore processes of policy implementation with respect to an ongoing empirical study in three very different sites: (1) Denmark; (2) Nepal; and (3) China. Rather than treat these investigations in the traditional manner of separate and contained national case studies, the author attempts to create a "policyscape"…

Teachers often embed their labor demands within a broader context to claim high moral ground and build community support. We analyze a recent teachers' strike in Israel, looking at how the strike played out in a country where the challenges of globalization collided with a socialist legacy in the face of an existential threat. The analysis reveals…

This article addresses a particular area of research in the field of education and child protection: the protective role of schools in the contexts of HIV/AIDS and poverty. Such adverse situations may lead children not to enroll in school or to drop out of school and subsequently to be subjected to abusive child labor and, in some cases, the worst…

The purpose of this article is to explore Microsoft Corporation as a new international actor shaping educational reforms and practices. This study examines how the implementation of Microsoft's global Partners in Learning (PiL) program varied and was mediated by national politics and national institutional practices in two different contexts,…

Discussed is the policy, based on intellectual merit, for admission to institutions of higher education in Pakistan--how it works, the operational definition of merit, and the validity of the system. (KC)

This paper outlines a heuristic framework for understanding basic patterns in the efforts of nation-states to achieve some degree of integration of ethnic minorities to the dominant culture. Four case studies, from Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands, illuminate the basic typology: Assimilation, Cultural Pluralism, Socialized Isolation,…

After presenting background on the British colonial period, 1786-1957, the author examines recent Malaysian educational policy for national integration of this multicultural society, through provision of equal opportunities for all ethnic groups and the use of Malay as the official language. Successes and problems are noted. (SJL)

The cases of Estonia and South Africa illustrate how a lack of coherence between a language policy and that policy's implementation plan can reduce both the policy and the implementation plan to symbolic acts of no benefit to students or communities. Comparison of these countries' language-in-education plans highlights the need to examine…