Comparative and International Education: Diversity of Voices

International organizations play an important role in the development of education around the world. Some have a direct impact on the rights of children and parents in education, while others have an indirect impact by addressing such issues as health, welfare or finance. Prominent among the most influential international organizations are the members of the United Nations family of agencies, although regional development banks and trade union organisations also play important roles. And no mention of international organizations would be complete without reference to the PISA programme of the OECD, although the OECD does much more in the field of education.

The Role of International Organizations in Education provides an introductory background to the operation of organisations that have had a direct and lasting impact on the implementation of educational policy in an international context. The accounts provided give researchers and practitioners to the field an initial account of the organizations, their development over the last seven decades, and their changing influence on the practice of education. By including voices from countries on the receiving end of international policies, the volume also introduces some of the debates that pervade in the field of international education.

Comparative Education: A Field in Discussion is a personal reflection on the field of comparative education from the perspective of one scholar who has been active in the field since the 1980s. In the 1960s and 1970s many scholars attempted to develop a science of comparative education, and those diverse efforts formed the backdrop to the study of comparative education in the 1980s. In this volume, the author, who was originally educated as a physical scientist, draws upon those earlier attempts, at the same time introducing new insights from the complexity of science and systems theory.

David Turner argues that these new insights should lead us away from a positivist vision of science, largely based on nineteenth century ideas of scientific method, and challenge us to accept that concepts are fluid, change over time, and are frequently contested. Nonetheless, those same concepts are essential to the way that we think of ourselves, our environment and the institutions that we inhabit.

Caught between the generalisations that our concepts force on us, and our wish to capture the specificity of each personal history, the activity that we engage in is comparative education.

This edited volume concerns Higher Education and the aftermaths of the COVID-19 pandemic. It comprises a wide reflection on the impact of the public health crisis derived from the COVID-19 pandemic on Higher Education and addresses the main question: what will it be like from now on? The collection includes a range of theoretical and methodological approaches highlighting conceptual, contextual and cultural issues; thus the chapters are of rather diverse types, including theoretical essays, exemplary case studies, reports from around the world describing concrete intervention projects, and studies in a wide range of disciplines.

Contributors are: Susan Beltman, Dana Crăciun, Morena Cuconato, Weimin Delcroix-Tang, Brigid Freeman, Susana Gonçalves, Tina Hascher, Marta Ilardo, Dong Kwang Kim, Vadim Kozlov, Beatrix Kreß, Pete Leihy, Elena Levina, Elena Luppi, Suzanne Majhanovich, Chenicheri Sid Nair, Monica Oprescu, Nilüfer Pembecioğlu, Allan Pitman, Aurora Ricci, Rachel Sheffield, Upasana Singh, Ian Teo, Tatiana Tregubova, Rashmi Watson and Pete Woodcock.