Early childhood education and care is currently experiencing unprecedented policy interest and expansion. This policy and practice landscape requires new forms of adaptive leadership, new spaces for production of the knowledge necessary for this changing context, and tools that can support the development of leadership qualities. This paper…

This study investigated professional learning taking place in a teacher-created online community. In particular, this aimed to explore how teachers at different levels of participation learn in an online community. The results showed that teachers usually began as observers, reading others' postings and using contributors' teaching…

The purpose of this study was to understand how elementary school teachers implemented culturally responsive teaching in their classes in Taiwan. Data were collected through interviews from five teachers with new Taiwanese children in their classes. The results indicated that teachers practised culturally responsive teaching based on the…

This introductory article serves as a hermeneutical tool for interpreting the subsequent articles in this special issue, which explores the nature and roles of comparative education in the 21st century within the context of a changing world order and the growing prominence of comparative education in the Asia-Pacific region. A review of the…

One of the challenges facing Hong Kong schools is the growing cultural diversity of the student population that is a result of the growing number of ethnic minority students in the schools. This study uses semi-structured interviews with 12 American, Canadian, Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani teachers working in three secondary schools in the public…

This study was carried out within the context of a requirement for every Australian Capital Territory Education and Training Directorate (ACT ETD) high school to include Indigenous perspectives across all areas of the curriculum. For the first time ever in the case study school reported in this article, two Torres Strait Island dances were taught…

This ethnographic case study examines perceptions of literacy and identity for a Korean-American student in a third-grade classroom. The researchers examine how teachers can misinterpret Asian identity in the classroom due to perceptions related to the "Model Minority Myth" and other stereotypical representations of Asian culture. By…

This paper reports on first year experiences of international students who use English as an additional language (EAL) in higher education in Australia. It examines how valued resources can foster a positive educational experience of these students from sociological perspectives. It draws data from an interview study, exploring narrative accounts…

Classroom experience is shaped by a number of factors. In this paper, we report a classroom observation study in China, illustrating regional variation in students' classroom learning experiences. Through comparing and contrasting observed classroom practices in three different regions in China (Chongqing, Hong Kong and Shanghai), the paper…

In this article I aim to initiate a more systematic dialogue between what is currently termed postfoundationalism and the mainstream of comparative education. I argue that comparative education, which is not only interdisciplinary by definition but also the one sub-discipline of education focusing most rigorously on relations, is the privileged…

The continuing incidence of extremist acts committed in the name of religion underscores the need to examine the interplay between religion and learning. This article argues for a secular foundation in society and school to protect against religion contributing to conflict and extremism. However, this is not a hard version of secularism, but a…

The institutional framework of the field of comparative education has developed significantly in recent decades. One manifestation of development has been the establishment and activities of professional societies. This paper focuses on 12 societies that operate in Asia and the Pacific. Some of these societies have long histories while others are…

The article examines two key concepts in research on policy borrowing and lending that are often used to explain why and how educational reforms travel across national boundaries: reception and translation. The studies on reception analyse the political, economic, and cultural reasons that account for the attractiveness of a reform from elsewhere.…

The broad goals of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) are: (1) to advance education for international understanding in the interests of peace, intercultural co-operation, mutual respect among peoples and observance of human rights; and (2) to improve education systems so that the right of all to education may be more…

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the English language had become the de facto "lingua franca" of the modern world. It is the most popular second or foreign language studied, such that now there are more people who have learned English as a second language and speak it with some competence than there are native English…