This article is based on doctoral research which contributed to my understanding of early years professional development and learning grounded in Froebelian principles. Through two freestanding but related case studies in London and San Miniato, the article explores the current professional learning and development for educators working with…

Purpose: This comparative study identifies core values expressed in Early Childhood Education (ECE) official policy documents from a sample of thirteen countries. Design/Approach/Methods: This study employs document analysis as well as content and thematic analysis. ECE values identified in the policy documents are categorized into three groups:…

Purpose: This article aims to reimagine education--and our selves--within the context of multiple, more-than-human worlds where everything and everyone are interrelated. Design/Approach/Methods: The aim is achieved by pursuing two speculative thought experiments to connect and bring into conversation seemingly unrelated knowledge systems across…

Educationists are constantly in need of theory to help them explain the phenomena with which they concern themselves, in this particular case, with education systems. In the early stages of their careers as scholars, education system experts avail themselves of existing theories to explain the phenomena observable in education systems. At a later…

In this article, we provide a comparative analysis of public education in Germany and the US, focusing on historical and contemporary challenges to education, "Bildung," and citizenry in the modern nation state. In particular, we examine relations among nation building processes and education, transnational discourses, mutual influences,…

From its very beginnings, we can discern two methodological approaches to comparative education; one broadly historical-philosophical-idiographic and another broadly empirical-positivist-nomothetic. Friedrich August Hecht's 1795-1798 "De re scholastica Anglica cum Germanica comparata" ("English and German school education…

Purpose: In this explorative, self-reflective article, I attempt to extend the methodological discussion of a "negative" approach to comparative education that I have recently articulated elsewhere. Here, I demonstrate how I attempted to put in practice negative comparative education by drawing on my experience at the Shanghai workshop,…

Forty-six interviews of French and Finnish Junior High School teachers clearly show a strong will to link professional commitment to common progressive values. However, the interviewees have to adjust these political or philosophical views when confronted with the reality of their professional everyday life and to the development of widely…

The article presents and analyses the first part of Norwegian educator Hartvig Nissen's (1815-1874) comprehensive report from his study tour to Scotland in 1853. Nissen occupies an important place in Norwegian nineteenth-century educational history and in nineteenth-century history in general, and he is regarded as the main driving force behind…

Few Nordic studies put children's experiences of social inequality at their centre. This article explores the children's perceptions of their education and well-being within two Nordic cities. The participants in this cross-national comparative qualitative study are children living in polarised urban metropolitan areas in Norway and Sweden. Our…

This article considers the contributions of Indigenous knowledges to educational research. It proposes the term "comparative Indigenous education research" (CIER) in an effort to promote Indigenous-centred research approaches in comparative and international Indigenous education studies. Through CIER, Indigenous peoples and communities…

International comparative curriculum research is becoming more important in a globalised world. However, up-to-date comparative studies of international foreign language education policies are still rare. This study compares current modern foreign language curricula in England with that in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia in Germany at Key…

This paper presents and discusses the findings of a collaborative investigation into Nordic approaches to evaluation and assessment in early childhood education and care. The project explored values and principles that underpin and guide evaluation in ECEC systems and practices in five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and…

After criticising the solutionist drift, this article argues for the need for three gestures, in order to build a more problematised Comparative Education: "estrangement," that is, the ability to see the unknown and therefore to distance ourselves from what is already known; "intercession," that is, the ability to perceive the…

The paper looked into concepts claimed to be essence of Chinese residential college, an on-going institution presumed to be a solution towards undergraduates' issues in some pioneer universities in China. It's analyzed that Chinese residential college today in China is not a Shuyuan that was ever striving as a unique education mode in ancient…