In this essay, the author explores the nationalization and secularization of the Iraqi educational system during the period between the two world wars, while demonstrating how various intellectuals championed pluralist educational models. Iraqi social and intellectual history has focused on education as an important prism reflecting approaches to…

This article is dedicated to shedding light on a spectrum of issues in educational thought in Islam, which may--due to their universal relevance--be of interest not only to specialists but also to a wider readership. It also provides an idea of the educational views and philosophies advocated by some great medieval Muslim thinkers which offer…

This second moderated discussion by the Comparative Education Review (CER) in part grows out of a symposium, "Past CIES Presidents Discuss the Value of Comparative and International Education Post-9/11," organized by then-President-Elect Kassie Freeman at the March 2003 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) annual meeting. The…

Education of African Americans in the U.S. South and Black South Africans during the periods of segregation and apartheid, respectively, were similar in both the nature of school oppression and the ways that oppressed communities sought to use education to promote racial advancement. Survey, interview, and focus-group data reveal similarities in…

Intensive open-ended interviews examined professional experiences of seven male and seven female African American teachers who were recruited into suburban schools to satisfy school desegregation mandates. Findings focus on respondents' heightened awareness of group boundaries in the work environment, racial differences in teachers' instructional…

Against a backdrop of educational decentralization and market transition, China demonstrates how local community resources condition educational inequality. Analysis of 1992 national survey data on 7,550 villages and nearly 78,000 rural children aged 12-14 revealed that household income, village income, and village provision of junior high schools…

Ethnographic fieldwork in six junior high schools in East Java, Indonesia, focused on local responses to a national policy devolving authority over the curriculum to the schools. Interviews and observations in the schools revealed little change in teacher actions. The objectives of decentralization clashed with deeply rooted ideas about authority,…

The worldwide cachet of scientific literacy has a distinctive cultural basis in a "world culture" that emphasizes universalism, individualism, and rationalization. Analysis of examples of a science literacy orientation in curricular statements, textbooks, and assessment materials shows that the logic of world culture, rather than narrow economic…

Since the 1979 revolution, Iranian women have been expected to fulfill the traditional role of women under Islamic law while contributing to the modern needs of their country. Iranian women have access to a wide range of (gender-segregated) educational opportunities and are drawing on their relatively high levels of educational attainment to…

Examines the intellectual arguments and thinking that might have accorded primacy to English in Trinidad and Tobago in the colonial period, and the ways in which formal schooling inculcated and imposed English. Draws on school records and evaluations of the curriculum and student performance to analyze how managers policed the English-language…

Reviews three books that (1) provide a systemic overview of schooling in Mexico in the 20th century, (2) present a critical ethnography of Mexican student culture and identity formation, and (3) incorporate analyses of indigenous cultural practices into cognitive theory. Reflects on the future of Mexican education in view of political corruption…

South African development and education policy documents were analyzed to examine postapartheid government goals concerning educational equality and social justice. Documents concerning equity of educational access, quality, outcomes, and governance reveal a shift from a populist social-democratic orientation to a conservative neoliberal position,…

Based on 1970s data, the "Heyneman-Loxley (HL) effect" proposed that in developing nations, school variables were more important than family socioeconomic status in determining academic achievement. A reassessment of the HL effect using 1990s TIMSS data found the relationship between family background and student achievement to be similar across…

The cases of Estonia and South Africa illustrate how a lack of coherence between a language policy and that policy's implementation plan can reduce both the policy and the implementation plan to symbolic acts of no benefit to students or communities. Comparison of these countries' language-in-education plans highlights the need to examine…

Archival research and interviews with teachers and key informants in Benin schools examined cultural schemata that define teacher identity as vessel and conveyer of special knowledge, civil servant, self-sacrificing parental surrogate, or efficient worker ensuring high test grades. Conflicts among these identities, between teachers and the state,…