From myths to models: the (re)production of world culture in comparative education

This article traces the emergence of the world culture theory in comparative education using critical discourse analysis. By chronicling the emergence and expansion of world culture theory over the past four decades, we highlight the (unintended) limitations and exclusive regimes of thought that have resulted. We argue that the theory's telos of a ‘world culture’ neglects the notions of power and agency, and continues to use discourses of modernism and ‘scientific’ methodology to justify conformity as the reigning global ‘norm’. The world culture theory ultimately results in an unwitting legitimisation of neoliberal policies and its varied educational projects. Drawing on the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of discourse analysis, we examine how the semantics and content of the world culture theory have evolved as it embraced an increasingly large and diverse community of scholars aligned with it. By highlighting some significant semantic shifts during the last four decades, we explore how the world culture theorists forged a relatively new (privileged) space in comparative education – a space that has increasingly turned deterministic and normative. Through a careful deconstruction of some of the basic assumptions of world culture theory, we call for reopening of an intellectual space for new ways of thinking about educational phenomena in the context of globalisation.     

Toward a Wonderland of comparative education

ABSTRACT

The publication of Noah & Eckstein's Toward a Science of Comparative Education (1969, Macmillan, NY) marked the beginning of an increasingly narrow research trajectory in comparative education, claiming a universality for Western knowledge and privileging scientific rationality in research. Juxtaposing the ‘science’ to Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’, such comparative education relegated more-than-human worlds and spiritual domains of learning – and being – to our collective pasts, personal childhood memories, or imaginations. How can we reorient and attune ourselves toward a Wonder(land), rather than a Science of comparative education exclusively, opening spaces for multiple ways of making sense of the world, and multiple ways of being? How can we reanimate our capacity toengage with a more-than-human world? Based on the analysis of children’s literature and textbooks published during various historical periods in Latvia, this article follows the white rabbit to reexamine taken-for-granted dichotomies – nature and culture, time and space, self and other – by bringing the ‘pagan’ worldviews or nature-centred spiritualities more clearly into focus, while reimagining education and childhood beyond the Western horizon.     

Youth Protests against Education Privatization Reforms in Post-Soviet States

This article examines youth protests against education privatization in the post-Soviet countries of Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine. Drawing on a sample of online sources and scholarly articles, this study uses critical discourse analysis and visual methodologies to examine why and how post-Soviet university students have organized to protest against education privatization reforms. The study also critically analyzes visual and discursive representations of youth protests by government officials, mass media, and academia in the post-Soviet education space. The study reveals that while student protesters are deeply concerned about the future of public education, the messages (and images) generated by youth protesters are reappropriated in various ways by mass media, often beyond the control of protesters themselves.     

Private tutoring in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: policy choices and implications

Private tutoring has become increasingly visible in Eastern Europe and Central Asia since the collapse of the socialist bloc in the early 1990s. Yet, this unprecedented growth of private tutoring, in its varied forms and arrangements, has remained largely unnoticed by policymakers in the region. Based on the data from the cross‐national studies of private tutoring in 12 countries, this explorative study examines factors driving the demand for private tutoring and discusses government responses to private tutoring in Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine (research conducted in 2004–2005) and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (research conducted in 2005–2006). The article analyzes various policy contexts and examines challenges that confront education stakeholders and policymakers as they formulate their responses to the rapidly‐spreading and constantly‐changing phenomenon of private tutoring. Finally, the article discusses whether, and to what extent, the existence of regulatory mechanisms influences the scope, nature, and implications of private tutoring across the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.     

Examining the influence of international large-scale assessments on national education policies

This paper examines whether, to what extent, and how international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) have influenced education policy-making at the national level. Based on an exploratory review of the research and policy literature on ILSAs and two surveys administered to educational policy experts, researchers, policymakers, and educators, our research found that ILSAs, with their multiple and ambiguous uses, increasingly function as solutions in search for the right problem – that is, they appear to be used as tools to legitimize educational reforms. The survey results pointed to a growing perception among stakeholders that ILSAs are having an effect on national educational policies, with 38% of respondents stating that ILSAs were generally misused in national policy contexts. However, while the ILSA literature indicates that these assessments are having some influence, there is little evidence that any positive or negative causal relationship exists between ILSA participation and the implementation of education reforms. Perhaps the most significant change associated with the use of ILSAs in the literature reviewed is the way in which new conditions for educational comparison have been made possible at the national, regional, and global levels.     

Institutional attention to European policy agendas: exploring the relevance of instrumental and neo-institutional explanations

This article addresses how European policy initiatives in higher education, research and innovation are diffused in the European higher education research and education area. Based on an instrumental and an institutional perspective, specific expectations are developed as to how policy diffusion might unfold, and, through an in-depth analysis of the strategic plans of 19 higher education institutions in Latvia and Norway, the article identifies factors that potentially mediate European policies into the strategic agenda of universities and colleges. The findings show that European Union membership and policy area seems to matter for the attention given to European policy initiatives, while administrative capacity at institutional level have less or quite mixed effects. The article concludes that both instrumental and institutional perspectives are of value in explaining how European policy diffusion takes place.