The Danish free school tradition has entailed a large degree of associational freedom for non-governmental schools, religious as well as non-religious. Until the late 1990s, the non-governmental schools were under no strict ideological or pedagogical limitations; they could recruit teachers and students according to their own value base, and were…

Comparative education as a field of study in universities (and "comparative education" as practised by nineteenth-century administrators of education in Canada, England, France and the USA) has always addressed the theme of "transfer": that is, the movement of educational ideas, principles and practices, and institutions and…

This article analyses how Education for All policies were transferred to Brazil and Latin America by means of ambitious educational strategic plans such as the Plan for the Development of Education and the National Education Plans -- promoted by the Federal Government of Brazil, and the Latin American Educational Goals -- promoted by the…

This article examines young Syrians' perceptions of higher education after the 2001 reforms, which expanded access to higher education and permitted the establishment of private universities. Data come from in-depth interviews conducted with 22 Syrians residing in Damascus, aged 18-32 in 2009. Analysis indicates youth are critical of the…

This paper examines the outstanding performance of Shanghai, China on PISA 2009 and its effects on other national systems and within the global education policy field. The OECD's PISA is helping to create this field by constituting the globe as a commensurate space of school system performance. The effects of Shanghai's success are…

This article presents a comparative analysis of two country-specific cases. The comparative analysis is situated within the broad domain of the changing knowledge economy landscape for educational policy. The two cases examine the transfer, embedding and enactment of policies during the interactions between supranational, national, institutional…

This paper addresses the politics of researching private education with special reference to the Indian context. Due to a recent increase in privatised forms of education globally and recognition of the private sector by governments, international agencies and researchers as a policy and academic interest, this is shifting ground. The evolving…

Despite a long history of post-independence aid to education, Kenya's relationships with overseas donors have, until recently, been markedly fractious. Donors' concerns about transparency and corruption, in the context of a political regime which became increasingly authoritarian, led to sharp reductions in aid to Kenyan education during the…

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education…

Comparative and international studies of education that focus on policy borrowing and transfer must be expanded to account for aspects of what Terence Halliday and Bruce Carruthers call "global norm-making." Such an approach examines how global policies are refracted within divergent but interrelated sociopolitical and economic contexts,…

This article discusses admissions policies to higher education during the Communist regime in Bulgaria (1946-89). It argues that under the conditions of the Bulgarian Communist regime, admissions policies were not only a component of the higher education system--viewed as an institution--but part and parcel of the process through which power was…

Since the 1940s, the concept of community participation has framed, mobilized, and legitimated national development agendas in the Singida Region of rural central Tanzania. Based on 19 months of ethnographic and archival research, this study examines the forms of community participation elicited through state and international development…

During the past 10 to 15 years there has been a renewed interest in the place of religion, religious education and religious schools in different parts of the world. This began in the USA and Europe with the development of private Christian schools. It was later followed by the resurgence of religious schools in the former parts of the Soviet…

How should religion be integrated into school curriculum? The authors compare two recent controversies about religion in school curriculum to provide an overarching perspective that can guide educators in their efforts to use religion for pedagogical purposes. The first controversy concerns curriculum approved by the California State Board of…

This article attempts to illustrate the significance of the geographical dimension of certain connections between Christianity and education in Europe. It does so by initially introducing the nature of the three components of the triangle with special reference to theory. Taking the fundamental geographical issue of scale, the discussion proceeds…