The Bloomsbury Handbook of Theory in Comparative and International Education 9781350078758, 9781350078789, 9781350078765

Citation preview

THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

i

Also available from Bloomsbury Identities and Education Edited by Eleftherios Klerides and Stephen Carney Affect Theory and Comparative Education Discourse Edited by Irving Epstein Comparative and International Education Edited by David Phillips and Michele Schweisfurth

ii

THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF

THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION Edited by Tavis D. Jules, Robin Shields and Matthew A.M. Thomas

iii

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Tavis D. Jules, Robin Shields, Matthew A.M. Thomas and contributors, 2021 The Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Charlotte James Cover image © NiseriN / iStock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jules, Tavis Deryck, editor. | Shields, Robin, 1980– editor. | Thomas, Matthew A. M., editor. Title: The Bloomsbury handbook of theory in comparative and international education / edited by Tavis D. Jules, Robin Shields, and Matthew A.M. Thomas. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020038981 (print) | LCCN 2020038982 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350078758 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350078765 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350078772 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Comparative education–Cross-cultural studies. | International education–Cross-cultural studies. Classification: LCC LB43 .B62 2021 (print) | LCC LB43 (ebook) | DDC 370.9—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038981 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038982 ISBN:

HB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3500-7875-8 978-1-3500-7876-5 978-1-3500-7877-2

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

iv

CONTENTS

L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS

viii

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ix

N OTES ON C ONTRIBUTORS

x

P REFACE Introduction: New Directions in Comparative and International Education Tavis D. Jules

xviii 1

Part One Foundational Theories 1

2

3

4

5

Structural-Functionalism in Comparative and International Education: Antecedents, Developments, and Applications Marcelo Marques

23

Imperialism, Colonialism, and Coloniality in Comparative and International Education: Conquest, Slavery, and Prejudice Tavis D. Jules, Syed Amir Shah, and Pravindharan Balakrishnan

37

Marxism in Comparative and International Education: Foundational Political Economy Perspectives on Education Robin Shields and Kalyan Kumar Kameshwara

53

Human Capital Theory in Comparative and International Education: Development, Application, and Problematics Donna C. Tonini

69

Dependency Theory and World-Systems Analysis in Comparative and International Education: Critical Accounts of Education and Development Tom G. Griffiths

87

Part Two Post-Foundational Theories 6

7

Post-Colonialism in Comparative and International Education: Interrogating Power, Epistemologies, and Educational Practice Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar, Arzhia Habibi, and Olga Mun

109

Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism in Comparative and International Education: Examining Background Context, Application, and Perspective Edith Mukudi Omwami

129

v

vi

8

9

CONTENTS

Post-Socialist Transformations in Comparative and International Education: Monuments, Movements, and Metamorphoses Iveta Silova, Zsuzsa Millei, Ketevan Chachkhiani, Garine Palandjian, and Mariia Vitrukh Gender in Comparative and International Education: Gender as Noun, Adjective, and Verb Laura Wangsness Willemsen and Payal Shah

10 Post-Foundational Approaches in Comparative and International Education: Uncertain Moves toward Unknown Horizons Jordan Corson and Susanne Ress

147

167

183

Part Three Theoretical Adaptation and Revision 11 Neoliberalism in Comparative and International Education: Theory, Practice, Paradox Anthony Welch 12 Framing Comparative and International Education Through a Neo-Institutional Lens: The Discourse on Global Patterns and Shared Expectations Alexander W. Wiseman 13 Neo-Realism in Comparative and International Education: Power, Influence, and Priorities Tavis D. Jules, Syed Amir Shah, Pravindharan Balakrishnan, and Serene Ismail 14 Neo-Gramscian Theory in Comparative and International Education: Power, Ideas, and Institutions Tavis D. Jules, Richard Arnold, Pravindharan Balakrishnan, and Victoria Desimoni

201

217

233

249

15 Regimes and Regionalism in Comparative and International Education: Cooperation and Competition Marcelo Parreira do Amaral

265

16 Cultural Political Economy (CPE) in Comparative and International Education: Putting CPE to Work in Studying Globalization Susan L. Robertson and Roger Dale

281

Part Four Theories of Policy and Practice 17 Constructivism and Learner-Centeredness in Comparative and International Education: Where Theories Meet Practice Matthew A. M. Thomas and Michele Schweisfurth

299

CONTENTS

18 Differentiation Theory and Externalization in Comparative and International Education: Understanding the Intersections of the Global and the Local Marcelo Parreira do Amaral and Marvin Erfurth

vii

313

19 Policy-Borrowing and Lending in Comparative and International Education: A Key Area of Research Gita Steiner-Khamsi

327

20 Situating Peace Education Theories, Scholarship, and Practice in Comparative and International Education Maria Hantzopoulos, Zeena Zakharia, and Brooke Harris Garad

345

21 Theories of Human Rights Education in Comparative and International Education: From Declarations to New Directions Monisha Bajaj and Nomsa Mabona

361

Part Five Interdisciplinary and Emerging Approaches 22 Theorizing Race and Racism in Comparative and International Education Sharon Walker, Arathi Sriprakash, and Leon Tikly

383

23 Queer Theory in Comparative and International Education: How Queer is CIE? Christian A. Bracho

399

24 Transitologies in Comparative and International Education: Transformation and Metamorphisms Tavis D. Jules

415

25 Actor-Network-Theory and Comparative and International Education: Addressing the Complexity of Socio-Material Foundations of Power in Education Jason Beech and Alejandro Artopoulos

429

26 Social Network Theory and Analysis in Comparative and International Education: Connecting the Dots for Better Understanding of Education Oren Pizmony-Levy

447

27 The Capabilities Approach in Comparative and International Education: A Justice-Enhancing Framework Joan DeJaeghere and Melanie Walker

459

I NDEX

475

ILLUSTRATIONS

17.1 Google NGram of key terms, 1965–2008.

305

19.1 The global spread of quality assurance policy.

330

19.2 The political translation of scientific expertise in the 2006 school reform.

336

24.1 Visual representation of Cowen’s ideal-type models and transitologies.

420

26.1 Social network of special interest groups in the Comparative and International Education Society.

448

26.2 Growth of “social networks” in Peer-Reviewed Comparative and International Education Publications.

452

26.3 Social network of education systems based on media reference in news stories about OECD PISA 2012 results.

456

27.1 General diagram of the CA.

462

viii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume would not have been made possible without the help of numerous people who we are indebted to. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers who received the proposal and provided great feedback to help us develop a book that is beneficial to students. We are deeply indebted to Mark Richardson and Bloomsbury Publishing for taking a huge risk on such a novel project. We are thankful for the work that Kim Bown has done on this project and keeping us on track. We are appreciative of our respective departments and programs for giving us the time to work on producing such a groundbreaking volume. We would like to thank our families, who were supportive during this journey. Finally, we would like to thank Victoria Desimoni for her tireless efforts in formatting this volume and responding to the authors’ comments.

ix

CONTRIBUTORS

Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar is a DPhil in Education candidate and Clarendon scholar at the University of Oxford. His DPhil study focuses on rural young people’s science education and aspirations related to development, contrasted against the state’s “science for development” agenda in Malaysia. His research interests include education and inter/ national development, post-colonialism, rural education, and cultural studies in science education. Richard Arnold is a Ph.D. student and graduate assistant and editor who conducts research in the area of cultural and educational policy studies at Loyola University Chicago. He is a former school teacher who has taught in numerous districts, and more recently conducted product field research for Google for Education. Alejandro Artopoulos teaches Technology and Educational Change in Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires. He is a researcher of the Scientific Research Commission of the Province of Buenos Aires (CIC) and R&D Director at the Center for Pedagogic Innovation at Universidad de San Andrés. He has worked as a consultant at UNDP, UNESCO, IADB, and at national ministries. He is interested in the informational development in the global south and policies related to education and technology. Monisha Bajaj is a Professor of International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco. She is also a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University—Chair, Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation in South Africa. Dr. Bajaj is the editor and author of six books, including, most recently, Human Rights Education: Theory, Research, Praxis (University of Pennsylvania Press 2017), as well as numerous articles. She has also developed curriculum—particularly related to peace education, human rights, anti-bullying efforts and sustainability—for non-profit organizations and inter-governmental organizations, such as UNICEF and UNESCO. Pravindharan Balakrishnan is an MA student in the Cultural and Education Policy Studies in Loyola University Chicago as a Malaysian recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Foreign Student Program. Prior to pursuing his graduate studies in the United States, Pravin obtained a B.Ed. TESL from the University of Portsmouth with a scholarship from the Ministry of Education Malaysia. Pravin has a keen interest in Comparative and International Education, particularly in the influence of international large-scale assessments and non-state actors in education. Jason Beech teaches Comparative Education and Sociology of Education in Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires. He is a researcher for the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET), and Director of the Ph.D. in Education at Universidad de San Andrés. He has taught in several universities in the Americas, Europe, and Australia. He is interested in the globalization of knowledge and policies x

CONTRIBUTORS

xi

related to education and in exploring the link between cosmopolitanism, citizenship, and education. Christian Alejandro Bracho is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education in the LaFetra College of Education at the University of La Verne, where he co-directs the Center for Educational Equity and Intercultural Research (CEEIR). His research explores topics related to teacher identity, teacher education, LGBT communities, and nonviolence education. He has been recently published in Politics and Policy, Journal of Homosexuality, and Educational Studies, and co-edited a volume about teachers teaching nonviolence in the United States. Ketevan Chachkhiani is a Ph.D. student at the Educational Policy and Evaluation program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her professional and research interests focus on teacher-related policies in post-Soviet countries with an emphasis on educational change and teacher agency, teacher autonomy, and professional development. Jordan Corson is finishing a doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University. Jordan’s scholarly engagements include anthropology and education, particularly with a focus on transnationalism, teacher education, and practices of equality. Roger Dale is Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Bristol. Roger has written extensively on state transformation, education policy, governance, and the globalization of education. Roger was founding co-editor of Globalisation, Societies and Education. Joan DeJaeghere is Professor of Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota (USA) and affiliate faculty of the Interdisciplinary Center for Global Change. Her scholarship is concerned with inequalities in education and how they affect youth’s future civic engagement, livelihoods, and wellbeing. Dr. DeJaeghere has published two books, including Educating Entrepreneurial Citizens: Neoliberalism and Youth Livelihoods in Tanzania (Routledge, 2017) and Education and Youth Agency (Springer, 2016), and numerous articles in journals. She has been the principal or co-principal investigator of several longitudinal research projects on youth livelihoods (East Africa), girls’ education (India), and women’s empowerment (Vietnam) in which she utilizes a capability approach. Victoria Desimoni is an MA student in the Cultural and Education Policy Studies program at Loyola University Chicago. She is also a graduate assistant who conducts research in the field of Comparative and International Education. Prior to enrolling in this program, Victoria obtained an MA in Liberal Studies from Duke University, and a Bachelor of arts in Religious Studies and Education from Pontifica Universidad Católica Argentina. Marvin Erfurth is currently Head of Research at the Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while also being a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Münster, Germany. Marvin’s main research areas are Comparative and International Education, higher education, education policy, and economics of education, and his doctoral research project is an empirical study comparing education hub initiatives in Singapore and the UAE.

xii

CONTRIBUTORS

Brooke Harris Garad is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Center on Education and Lifelong Learning at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her research interests within the field of teacher education relate to culturally relevant research methodologies and pedagogies. She is currently the Chair of the Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community. Tom G. Griffiths is a Professor of International Education and Development at OsloMet University, Norway. His research is focused on the application of world-systems analysis as a framework for understanding the relationship between education and development, exploring the potentials for critical education to contribute to the transformation of the capitalist world-system and advance a non-capitalist alternative. Arzhia Habibi is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford’s Department of Education. She uses Mandarin to conduct her research in the Chinese higher education context, with a specific focus on exploring the rooted and local expressions of global and world citizenship education. Prior to her studies at Oxford, Arzhia received a Bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies at The University of Nottingham, and a Master’s in International Communication in Taiwan at National Chengchi University. As a child, she also attended kindergarten in Fuzhou, Fujian province of China. Maria Hantzopoulos is an Associate Professor of Education and Participating Faculty in International Studies, Urban Studies, and Women’s Studies at Vassar College. She is also the Coordinator of Secondary Certification and the Faculty Director for Teaching Development. Her research and publications pay close attention to school culture, teacher well-being, assessment, and school reform, and broadly consider how schools structure in/equity in their contexts and beyond. She is the author of Restoring Dignity: Human Rights in Action (TC Press, 2016) and co-editor of Peace Education: International Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2016). Serene Ismail, born in Khanewal, Pakistan, is a Fulbright Scholar, who graduated in M.A. Cultural and Educational Policy Studies from Loyola University, Chicago. She also did an MBA in Human Resource Management from Air University Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2013. She was a Graduate Student Representative for the School of Education at the Graduate Student Advisory Committee. Serene is the first Pakistani Fulbrighter to speak at The Graduate School’s Commencement Ceremony 2019 as a Student Speaker. She spent seven years in the education sector of Pakistan as a teacher and mentor at various grade levels. She is the Board Member for Fulbright Chicago Chapter. Serene lives in Herndon, VA with her husband and daughter. Tavis D. Jules is an Associate Professor of Cultural and Educational Policy Studies at Loyola University Chicago, specifically focusing on Comparative and International Education and International Higher Education. His vast professional and academic experiences have led to research and publications across the Caribbean and North Africa. He is President of the Caribbean Studies Association, Book Review Editor for the Caribbean Journal of International Relations, and an International Institute of Islamic Thought Fellow. His most recent books include: Educational Transitions in PostRevolutionary Spaces: Islam, Security and Social Movements in Tunisia (with Teresa Barton, Bloomsbury 2018); Re-Reading Education Policy and Practice in Small States: Issues of Size and Scale in the Emerging Intelligent Society and Economy (with Patrick

CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

Ressler, Peter Lang 2017); and The New Global Educational Policy Environment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Gated, Regulated and Governed (Emerald 2016). Kalyan Kumar Kameshwara is an ESRC funded Ph.D. student at the Department of Education, University of Bath. His doctoral work focuses on the role of decentralization and accountability processes in education systems using international large-scale assessments. He has an MRes in Advanced Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences from the University of Bath, UK and an MA in Sociology from South Asian University, New Delhi. His research interests broadly include Sociological Theory, Social Statistics, Comparative and International Education and Political economy of education. Nomsa Mabona is a high school English teacher and a graduate of the Master’s program in Human Rights Education at the University of San Francisco. She co-headed her high school’s United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) group in Switzerland; she was and continues to be an advocate of human rights education. When she moved to the United States in 2015, she taught literacy and numeracy to women in a San Francisco county jail. Her studies focus on human rights education and curriculum development in South Africa, which is her second home country. Marcelo Marques, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute of Education and Society at the University of Luxembourg. He is interested in the fields of Comparative and International Education, institutional theory, political sociology, and higher education and science. He has published in the International Journal of Lifelong Education, European Educational Research Journal, Research in Comparative and International Education, and Higher Education. His most recent book is European Educational Research (Re) Constructed: Institutional Change in Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, and the European Union (Oxford Press 2018, with Mike Zapp, Justin Powell, Gerta Biesta, and Jo Helgetun). Zsuzsa Millei is a Professor at the Faculty of Education and Culture and Tampere University, Finland. She is interested in child politics in its broadest sense and post-socialist knowledge production. She employs comparisons of different places and times to help highlight—from childrens’ perspectives—how the taken for granted ways of everyday nationhood, Cold War divides, and ideologies operate. Olga Mun is pursuing her Ph.D. studies at the Department of Education, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on social epistemological analysis of internationalization of research practices in Kazakhstan. She holds an MA in Comparative and International Education from Lehigh University, USA. Currently she serves as a co-convenor of the Comparative and International Education Special Interest Group (SIG) at the British Education Research Association. Edith Mukudi Omwami is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches courses in theories in comparative education, development education, social context of learners, and education research practice. Her research focus is on the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs) with respect to issues pertaining to education access, participation, education finance, gender and education, empowerment of women, and nutrition and cognition. Her research examines the context for marginalized and vulnerable populations that include

xiv

CONTRIBUTORS

children and youth, ethnic minority, women, and populations in rural areas and those in conflict-impacted spaces. She is also involved in development intervention in the areas of education and food security in Africa. Her most recent publications are on Comparative Perspectives on International Early Childhood Education in the Context of SDGs (United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing Limited) and Globalization, Nationalism, and Inclusive Education For All: A reflection on the ideological shifts in education reform (Dordrecht: Springer). Garine Palandjian is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Educational Policy and Evaluation program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Through a decolonial lens, Garine’s research focuses on redefining education and identities through post-Soviet and post-socialist Armenian education transformations, and memories of bordering practices and experiences. Marcelo Parreira do Amaral is a Full Professor of Education at the Institute of Education of the University of Muenster, Germany. Parreira do Amaral teaches and researches in the field of Comparative and International Education, Education Policy Studies, Lifelong Learning and Education Institutions. His current research focuses on international educational policy and governance issues at various levels and scales. The focus of attention of his research lies in understanding how education institutions and systems are impacted by the relationships between the local, national, and international levels, with particular attention to issues of access to and equity in education. Recent publication: Researching the Global Education Industry—Commodification, the Market and Business Involvement (Palgrave 2019, edited volume together with Gita-Steiner-Khamsi and Christiane Thompson). Oren Pizmony-Levy is an Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Trained as a sociologist, his research and teaching center on the role of global educational movements in educational and social change. Specifically, his scholarship focuses on three “cases”: international large-scale assessments, environmental and sustainability education, and LGBT+ education. His work has been published in Comparative Education Review, Globalisation, Societies and Education, International Journal of Educational Development, Oxford Review of Education, and Sociological Perspectives. Currently, Pizmony-Levy co-leads a research partnership with the New York City Department of Education to improve schools’ engagement with sustainability education. Susanne Ress is a postdoctoral scholar and program coordinator of the International Master of Quality Education (IMPEQ) at the Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg. Her work has been published in Comparative Education Review and Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Ress’ research brings together theories from critical development studies, Comparative and International Education, critical Black and ethnic studies, and post-foundational approaches to education research, examining educational policies as technologies of power and representation. She currently explores how policies concerning sustainability, globality, mobility, and employability shape young people’s lives in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Susan L. Roberson is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge. She has written extensively on globalization and education, and is currently Editor-in-

CONTRIBUTORS

xv

Chief of Globalisation, Societies and Education. Susan’s recent books include Public Private Partnerships in Education (2012) and Global Regionalisms and Higher Education (2016). Michele Schweisfurth is Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Glasgow. Among her key publications in Comparative Education and in pedagogy are Learner-Centred Education in International Perspective: Whose pedagogy for whose development? (Routledge 2013) and Comparative and International Education: An introduction to theory, method, and practice (2nd Edition, Bloomsbury 2014, with David Phillips). In addition to a number of research projects on education in the Global South, she is currently an Education Senior Research Fellow at the UK Department for International Development, and a member of the Independent Evaluation Committee of the Global Partnership for Education. Payal Shah is an Associate Professor, University of South Carolina and conducts ethnographic research at the intersection of education, gender, culture, and society. She explores these themes by examining the socio-cultural context of female marginalization and the role of formal and non-formal educational initiatives in promoting gender equity in South Asia. She has been engaged with research and practice on educational issues in India for over 15 years. Payal teaches courses in Comparative Education, social foundations of education and qualitative research. She holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy Studies, an MA in International and Comparative Education, and an MA in Sociology, all from Indiana University. Syed Amir Shah teaches Political Science at the University of Balochistan, Pakistan. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. on a Fulbright grant in the United States. He is enrolled in the Cultural and Education Policy Studies at Loyola University Chicago. His research interests are education and social inequalities, educational privatization, global education policies, and textbook analysis. Robin Shields is Professor of Education at the University of Bristol. His research interests focus on the globalization of education from a macro-sociological perspective, particularly on new applications of quantitative methods, such as social network analysis and multilevel modeling. Robin is co-editor of the Comparative Education Review and has served on the Executive Committee of the British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE). His research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Higher Education Academy, and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. In 2013, he received the George Bereday Award from the Comparative and International Education Society for his application of social network analysis to international student mobility in higher education. Iveta Silova is a Professor at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the study of globalization and the intersections of post-socialist, post-colonial, and decolonial perspectives in education. Arathi Sriprakash is a Professor of Education at the University of Bristol. Her recent work is centrally concerned with the relationship between epistemic and racial justice. She is author of Pedagogies of Development: the politics and practice of child centred education in India (2012) and The ‘Poor Child’: the cultural politics of education, childhood and

xvi

CONTRIBUTORS

international development (2016). She is currently completing a book with colleagues called Learning Whiteness: education and the settler colonial state. Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Ph.D., is a Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, and Director of NORRAG in Geneva. A past president of the Comparative and International Education Society, she published twelve books and numerous articles on topics related to comparative methodology, comparative policy studies, policy-borrowing and lending, globalization and education, and public–private partnerships. Matthew A. M. Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Education and Sociology of Education at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and an MA from Columbia University, Teachers College. Matthew has worked as a public-school teacher in the United States and as an educational researcher, educator, and consultant in Australia, Mali, Nigeria, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Zambia. His research examines educational policies, pedagogical practices, teachers’ lives, and the changing roles of higher and teacher education. Leon Tikly holds a UNESCO Chair in inclusive, good quality education at the University of Bristol. He has studied issues of race, racism and anti-racism extensively with a focus on South Africa and in the UK. His (2020) book on Education for Sustainable Development in the Postcolonial World: Towards a Transformative Agenda for Africa brings together many of his empirical and theoretical concerns. Donna C. Tonini is the Associate Director at the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and also is an Instructor in the Global Studies Graduate Minor Program. She holds an Ed.D. in International Educational Development with a Finance & Planning specialization from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her doctoral research in Tanzania identified barriers of entry to secondary school, and evaluated how educational policy in Tanzania addressed those barriers and impacted enrollment growth. Dr. Tonini has also worked on development projects in Uganda and the Caribbean, and conducted research on education in Singapore and the United States. Mariia Vitrukh is a Ph.D. student in Educational Policy and Evaluation Program at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Drawing from Art and Psychology, Mariia explores other ways of knowing and relating in the context of forced migration of people and nature. Melanie Walker is a distinguished professor at the University of the Free State, South Africa, and South African research chair in Higher Education & Human Development. Her research interests turn on higher education, capabilities expansion and justice in the Global South, with attention to development ethics, decoloniality, intersectional inequalities, and also participatory methodologies and knowledge ecologies. Sharon Walker is a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge researching issues of race equality and racism in UK higher education policy. She has co-authored on race and racism in education and international development. She also works with school leaders and teachers on anti-racist education initiatives.

CONTRIBUTORS

xvii

Laura Wangsness Willemsen’s teaching, research, and practice are aimed at ensuring schooling supports equity and well-being in both US and international contexts. Her work focuses on gender and development, ethnographic and narrative research methods, and education in East Africa. Her ethnographic, life history work in Tanzania examines how young women’s aspirations, well-being, and life trajectories are shaped by their secondary schooling as well as how young women take up, resist, or reshape various notions of female empowerment. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Doctoral Studies in Education at Concordia University, Saint Paul. Anthony Welch is Professor of Education, University of Sydney. His numerous publications address education reforms, principally within Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Widespread project experience includes East and SE Asia, particularly in higher education. His work has been translated into a dozen languages, and he has been Visiting Professor in the USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Malaysia, Turkey, China, and Hong Kong, China. A Fulbright New Century Scholar, Haiwai Mingshi, Tübitak and DAAD Scholar, recent books include The Professoriate: Profile of a Profession (Springer 2005), Education, Change and Society (Oxford, 4th Edition, 2018), ASEAN Industries and the Challenge from China (Palgrave 2011), and Higher Education in South East Asia (Routledge 2011). A consultant to the ADB project Higher Education in Dynamic Asia, he directed The Chinese Knowledge Diaspora project (with Yang, Rui). In 2018 he received a Visiting Foreign Expert award. Alexander W. Wiseman, Ph.D., is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. Dr. Wiseman holds a dual-degree Ph.D. in Comparative and International Education and Educational Theory and Policy from Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University, an M.A. in Education from The University of Tulsa, and a B.A. in Letters from the University of Oklahoma. He serves as senior editor of the Journal FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education and editor of the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education (Emerald Publishing). Zeena Zakharia is an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her publications examine the interplay of language, conflict, and peacebuilding in education and advance a critical approach to refugee studies in the Middle East. These scholarly commitments are grounded in over two decades of educational research and leadership in war-affected contexts.

PREFACE

This book was conceived from a need to provide students, practitioners, and researchers with an accessible introductory text that examines the role of theory and its application in comparative and international education (CIE). The goal of this book is to offer readers a clear overview of foundational theoretical paradigms that have influenced the development of CIE and vice versa. We hope that through this book, readers will feel more empowered to select, adapt, or create a framework as they undertake their own applications of theory to the field of CIE. The book explores a broad collection of social science theories that intersect along a range of different subfields. In each chapter, the authors include practical examples so that readers can see how theory or theories are initiated and enacted in practice. We have also incorporated additional sources at the end of each chapter that readers can consult for further erudition. This book invites CIE scholars, educators, practitioners, policymakers, and especially students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels to explore key theoretical paradigms in CIE. The book is divided into five parts. The first section introduces foundational theories from social sciences that are central to disciplines upon which the field of CIE is based (e.g., sociology, political science). These theories tend to be broad and general in nature, using a set of concepts and relationships between them to try to explain as much about society as possible. They have been used in CIE research and development practice, as well as for informing the subsequent theories used in CIE. Theories addressed in this section include structural-functionalism; imperialism, colonialism, and coloniality; Marxism; human capital theory; and dependency theory; and world-systems analysis. The second section examines post-foundational theories developed largely in response to the dominant foundational theories outlined in the first section and to changing geopolitical contexts. This section explores post-colonialism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, post-socialist transformations, gender (including post-structuralist perspectives), and innovative post-foundational approaches in CIE. The third section locates the impact of globalization upon the theories of neoliberalism, neo-institutionalism, neo-realism, neo-Gramsci, regimes and regionalism, and cultural political economy. This section explores how these different theories have responded to and incorporated the global discourse of globalization and its subsequent impact upon national educational reforms. The fourth section focuses on the ways in which various theories have informed and explained both policy and practice. This section examines constructivism and learnercenteredness, differentiation and externalization, policy borrowing and lending, peace education, and human rights education, all within and beyond the context of CIE. The fifth section looks at how interdisciplinary theories from other fields have been incorporated into CIE (which is itself interdisciplinary). Theorization of race and sexual identity have constituted a glaring omission in the literature, and chapters on this topic look at how this gap is being addressed. Other perspectives in this section address transitologies, actor-network-theory, social network theory, and the capabilities approach. xviii

PREFACE

xix

Collectively these chapters further represent more new and emerging ways to analyze education. Producing a volume of this nature is inherently complex, though from the outset, we aimed to incorporate a diverse range of scholarly perspectives. Thus, the contributors to this volume represent scholars with varied personal and professional identities, areas of theoretical and geographical expertise, institutional affiliations, and at different career stages. We were not able to include all scholars (or theories) due to space limitations, of course, and in some cases, certain authors were unavailable or became unable to contribute. Yet, we are pleased with the results, and with the fact that more than 45 contributors from 27 institutions have been involved in a text of this scale. In sum, this book highlights a collection of core theories in comparative and international education as described by a diverse group of both eminent and emerging scholars in the field. While scholars do not always agree on how to define theory, what is clear is that we use theories models to guide our work and that these approaches influence the development of this exciting and interdisciplinary field. This book therefore surveys the theoretical landscapes and debates within CIE, and invites students, scholars, and practitioners to join these lively and ongoing discussions. Dr. Tavis D. Jules Dr. Robin Shields Dr. Matthew A. M. Thomas

xx

Introduction New Directions in Comparative and International Education TAVIS D. JULES

The future of comparative education rests, in a sense, upon easy accessibility to the centers where comparative education sources are housed and where comparative education is taught. On the quality of these facilities depends the success of introducing the subject to beginner students. That students in the field gain an impression of rigorous scholarship, excitement, and a conviction that their study is worthwhile is vital to the sound establishment of comparative education as a respected discipline. —Bereday, 1964, p. 171 In the almost 60 years since Bereday wrote the words in the epigraph above, a great deal of theorization by a wide range of scholars has advanced the “twin fields” (Wilson, 1994) of comparative and international education (CIE). New interpretations emerged, others were adapted, and some dissipated. Yet, at this vital moment in CIE, when various theoretical frameworks function across different scales and levels, critical consideration of theory is needed. The role of this handbook is to help introduce students, researchers, and practitioners to CIE, and more importantly, to equip them with a range of theoretical frameworks for research in the field. In short, this volume seeks to sketch out what it means to use theory in the field of CIE in a changing geopolitical landscape. But first, what is theory? While definitions of theory abound and are explored later in this chapter, in this volume we take the position that, following Anyon (2009), theory can be conceptualized as: an architecture of ideas—a coherent structure of interrelated concepts—whose contemplation and application (1) help us to understand and explain discursive and social phenomena and (2) provides a model of the way that discourse and social systems work and can be worked upon. —p. 3 These two components are vital, as theories enable us to both understand and apply actions in the real world. Moreover, we do not have the option to choose to use theory, on the one hand, or to ignore it, on the other. Rather, “theory is within every practice, whether evident and known, or not” (McCowan and Unterhalter, 2015, p. 33). Attaining a nuanced understanding of theories, and particularly those utilized in a diverse interdisciplinary community such as CIE, is therefore paramount. In addition, it may be beneficial to distinguish between theory and paradigm. These terms and concepts may feel as if they overlap, and indeed authors often use them in 1

2

HANDBOOK OF THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

complementary ways. For our purposes, we generally consider a paradigm as encompassing (and broader than) theory. Popkewitz (1984) suggests this understanding: the idea of a paradigm directs attention to science as having constellations of commitments, questions, methods and procedures that underlie and give direction to scientific work . . . As people are trained in a research community, they learn ways in which to think, “see”, “feel”, and act toward the world . . . The assumptions [of a research community] are so deeply rooted in the personal reality of a researcher that they become ‘facts’ that structure the perceptions of the theorist and shape his/her subsequent theorizing. —pp. 33–34 In this understanding, the researcher’s paradigm or paradigmatic commitments help shape—and appear more significant than—the theories they employ. As noted in the preface and later throughout this volume, however, theories can operate at different levels as they aim to explain varying phenomena in the real world. In exploring the variety of theories within CIE and their usage, we aim to show how theoretical stances inform the changing social orders. Theories and their underlying paradigms inform everything that occurs in CIE, and both scholars and practitioners in the field use data, methods, and theories from numerous different disciplines, traditions, and educational practices. Our theoretical choices are usually informed by disciplinary traditions that are evident in the approaches our field takes, and so our field changes as the theories shift, morph, and evolve. Several scholars have argued that CIE draws from various disciplines because it rests on multiple theoretical perspectives (Jacob et al., 2011; Rust, 2004). McCowan and Unterhalter (2015), in writing about education and international development, suggest that there is no “single theoretical lexicon”—instead, it is “a polyvalent area, drawing on different disciplines, engaging with some of the complexities of [theoretical] application and attempting to dialogue with policymaking through posing questions and offering critical reflection” (p. 28). Theories, therefore, offer different truths depending on a range of approaches and paradigms (Marginson and Mollis, 2001). This theoretical landscape is very complex, with a long history in the social sciences as an explanation of the production of knowledge about human behavior and changes in social systems. Such a fluid theoretical journey is no easy task for researchers, let alone students who are new to the field, as Bereday (1964) suggests above. Yet, a theoretical framework is necessary to guide research projects, educational reforms, and new policy programs. Indeed, we work in a field that “applies historical, philosophical and social science methods and theory to the study of international problems in education” (Epstein, 1994a, p. 918). In short, CIE is an applied problemoriented field built upon intellectual, methodological, and theoretical foundations and traditions. Returning to the geopolitical landscape of CIE, since its inception, scholars in our field have used comparisons to help better understand the diffusion of educational theories. As Mills (1970) asserts, “comparisons are required in order to understand what may be the essential conditions of whatever we are trying to understand” (p. 163). Cox (1981) notes that “theory is always for someone and some for purpose” (p. 128, emphasis in original) and therefore in using comparisons, we should all be critical since “to be critical, to refuse to accept a theory at face value, to look at it and see where it comes from, what it was designed to achieve, the context in which it was developed” (Cox, 2012, p. 19) should be our goal. In this way, comparison should be situated within theories that permit us to

INTRODUCTION

3

choose the units of analysis to test that theory for its utility. In doing so, we recognize that theory is everywhere and in everything, and also dynamic in its explanations of changing phenomena. Given that CIE as a field is interdisciplinary, researchers may seek to engage with numerous theoretical paradigms to understand how and why ideological, structural, and programmatic changes occur in national educational systems. As Ball (2003) notes, “theories offer another language, a language of distance, of irony, of immigration” (p. 80). In this way, the work of the social scientist is “to examine a paradigm, or theoretical perspective, for its core values and philosophical roots in order to gain insight into the perspective” (as cited in Paulston, 1977, p. 374). A good theory provides social scientists with a roadmap of useful direction that helps them to interpret the meanings and limitations of their conclusions. In fact, Paulston (1993) was the first to compare and map paradigms and theories in CIE texts by creating what he called social cartography, which presented a heuristic taxonomy of knowledge perspectives in the field. The field also has a rich tapestry of the “hybrid academic-practitioner” (Wilson, 1994) relationship, which has informed the research debates being conducted in the field. Ever since its (formal) scientific formation with the work of Michael Sadler in the 1900s, CIE has aimed to examine “the imminent general forces upon which all systems are built” (Bereday, 1964, p. 23). As Bickmore et al. (2017) note, CIE “also challenges us to think broadly about the link between local practices and global issues and to explore the overlapping values and social systems that underpin the educational enterprise itself ” (p. 2). As students training in the field of CIE, it is important to note that an understating of the field’s hybridity is an “essential part of teacher training, theoretical work in education, and the practical tasks of policymaking and administration in education” (Noah, 1974, p. 341). In fact, it is the changes at the sub-national, national, regional, and global levels that shape our thinking about the complex relations that design and impact school systems. Thus, developing a strong grounding in various theories is even more important in recent decades as comparisons have become more widespread across counties, organizations, and scholars. Therefore, far from static, CIE as a field is a living organism, with the foundational philosophies, approaches, methodologies, and conceptualizations underpinning it being continuously questioned and probed. This handbook seeks to survey theoretical frameworks across the field of CIE. While the debates on the merits of the marriage of 1969 between comparative education and international education have been settled (see Wilson, 1994), the role of theory in CIE continues to elude an end. For example, prior to 1969, comparative education and international education were two separate fields of studies with comparative education being viewed as more theoretical in nature, and international education seen as practitioner-oriented. On the one hand, the question beckons whether theory should inform the practices of international education. On the other hand, should practices inform theory in comparative education. Rather than come down on either side in this bifurcated debate of theory and practice, this book hopes to bring together the different ways in which theory seeks to inform practice and vice versa. In fact, Arnove (2001) argues that “one major goal of comparative education has been to contribute to theory building and to the formulation of generalizable propositions about the workings of school systems and their interactions with their surrounding economies, polities, cultures, and social orders . . .” (p. 482). Similarly, Holmes (1971) asserts that “one aim of comparative education is theoretical. It is to improve our understanding of education as such; and in particular of our own national problems in education. Comparative education has a practical purpose too” (pp. x–xi). Yet, others have also argued that our field comes

4

HANDBOOK OF THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

in part from a “lack of clarity about what it is we are studying and whose perspective we are studying it from and from a persistent refusal to address our study to educational processes. Some of these problems relate to theoretical approaches scholars have taken” (Kelly, 1987, p. 447). As Paulston (1977) maintains, the ideological tendencies that characterize the theoretical approach of the field are not necessarily incompatible. However, many comparativists have come to believe that “the convictions that constitute a person’s theory represent answers to a variety of questions about the nature of human development” (Thomas, 1986, p. 229). The field of CIE has always had a scientific dimension aimed at theory building. As Farrell (1979) poignantly asserts, all sciences are comparative. In focusing on the socio-economic and historical contexts of national educational systems, the aim of CIE should be to map the relationship between theories and social contexts to create a deeper understanding of multiple perspectives (Rust, 2000). In what follows, this introduction explains the rise of comparative and international education. This is followed by an explanation of how theory has been used in this field.

THE HISTORY OF THE FIELD Many scholars, including John Dewey (1859–1952), have internationally done comparative work without being labeled as a comparative and international education researcher (Wilson, 1994). Epstein (1994) articulates that: comparativists . . . are primarily scholars interested in explaining why educational systems and processes vary and how education relates to wider social factors and forces. . . International educators use findings derived from comparative education to understand better the educational processes they examine and thus to enhance their ability to make policy relating to programs such as those associated with international exchange and understanding. —p. 918 In the early days of CIE, the intellectual and ideological orientations of the academic field questioned whether this field should be applied or theoretical. In the end, much of the field evolved in the context of colonialism and self-determination, and the field has emerged as a hybrid of both theory and practice. Noah and Eckstein (1969) suggest the evolution of the field is composed of five stages, beginning with the tales of travelers based on broad descriptions of educational systems, institutions, and practices abroad. The second stage, in the nineteenth-century, was one of educational borrowing or learning through example, while the third stage was comprised primarily of encyclopedic work on foreign countries so as to accumulate information and promote international understanding, pioneered by Michael Sadler (1861–1943), Nicholas Hans (1888–1969), and Isaac Kandel (1881–1965). This “stressed explanation rather than description and sought that explanation in a study of the historical context and the influence of cultural forces” (Noah and Eckstein, 1969, p. 4). Noah and Eckstein (1969) suggest that in the twentieth-century, the final two stages emerged: firstly being concerned with understanding the national character as it focused on the forces and factors shaping educational systems; while the fifth and final stage, occurring after the First World War, engrossed itself with the empirical methods and the drive towards positivism. However, it was the work of Kelly and Altbach (1981) that advocated for a theory-driven comparison that frames studies through neo-colonialism, world-system analysis, and dependency theory

INTRODUCTION

5

lenses to understand how national school systems are influenced by the local and global. Based on this interpretation, Paulston (1993) argues that three different theoretical movements mark the field. The first one, following the Second World War, is called “orthodoxy,” while a second movement in the 1970s (described as “heterodoxy”) emerged. In the 1980s, the third and most recent movement, labeled “emergent heterogeneity” (Epstein, 1994b), began. These categorizations came to represent the contemporary intellectual communities rooted in different paradigms. In a similar manner, Kazamias (1961) makes a distinction between “old” and “new” approaches to the field where the former is viewed as being “descriptive and prescriptive,” the latter as being more analytical and “scientific.” Though the field began formally in the mid-nineteenth-century, it can be traced to the post-Enlightenment era with the works of Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris. It was in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, in 1816–17, that Jullien de Paris launched his plan for what would become Comparative Education by requesting statistical information from governments concerning various facets of their education systems in order to “deduce true principles and determined routes so that education would be transformed into an almost positive science” (as cited in Watson, 1998, p. 10). Jullien’s (1817) Esquisse et vues Préliminaires d’un Ouvrage sur l’Éducation Comparée (Plan for a Work on Comparative Education) contained a series of questions that surveyors could use to describe the state of education, and it would become one of the foundational texts in the field. His main aim was to collate, compare, and analyze statistical information, which reflected the scientific preoccupation of the field at this time, and his research sought to use theory to understand “what works,” what “best practices” could be identified and transferred from elsewhere. These developments made comparative education more positivistic and began to institutionalize the field as a science. This would eventually lead to the creation of such global entities as the International Project for the Evaluation of Education Achievement (IEA). As Cowen (2006) asserts: there is still considerable political and ideological power in the long-running epistemological self-justifications of modern comparative education which was born with the Jullien version of “relevant research” and the aspiration to provide—by international questionnaire—“robust data.” —p. 564 While Jullien would lay the foundation for methodical international studies in education, others, such as Horace Mann (1796–1859), Calvin Stowe (1802–1886), William Torrey Harris (1835–1909), and Henry Barnard (1811–1900) in the United States, Victor Cousin (1792–1867) in France, and Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) in England are credited with the “proto-scientific and the reformist/meliorist administrative motif ” (Kaloyannaki and Kazamias, 2009, p. 8) of the field. In this way, Jullien’s work was nomothetic in that it isolated a few social factors to identify patterns and trends in national educational systems (Epstein, 1994a). Meanwhile, beyond comparative education, Sylvester (2002) has maintained that the term “international education” has been consistently used since the 1860s. As Butts (1971) notes, international education arose with the nation state and, therefore, the term connoted “educational relations among nation states from the sixteen century onwards” (p. 165). Some scholars argue that it was Cesar August Basset who started international education by trying to reform the French educational system through the observations of education outside of France. He called for education to be “free from national pedagogical

6

HANDBOOK OF THEORY IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

principles” (as cited in Watson, 1998, p. 10). Bassett (1814) called for the appointment of a scholar “free from national and methodological prejudices” (as cited in Epstein, 1992, p. 10) to travel and observe educational systems outside of France. Others, such as Hill (2012), have traced the foundation of international education to John Comenius (1592– 1670), a Czech teacher who drew up numerous plans on international cooperation in educat