This book brings together many of the outstanding scholars in the field of comparative and international education to provide new perspectives on the dynamic interplay of global, national, and local forces as they shape the functioning and outcomes of education systems in specific contexts. Various chapters in the book call for a rethinking of the nation-state as the basic unit for analyzing school-society relations; provide new ways of conceptualizing equality of educational opportunity and outcomes; call attention to the need to study social movements in relation to educational reform; emphasize the value of feminist, postcolonial, and culturally sensitive perspectives to comparative inquiry into the limitations as well as potential of education systems to contribute to individual development and social change; and provide detailed critical accounts of how various international financial and technical assistance agencies shape educational policy and practice in specific regions of the world. Following an Introduction: Reframing Comparative Education: The Dialectic of the Global and the Local (Robert F. Arnove), this book is divided into seventeen chapters: (1) Technocracy, Uncertainty, and Ethics: Comparative Education in an Era of Postmodernity and Globalization (Anthony Welch); (2) Institutionalizing International Influence (Joel Samoff); (3) The State, Social Movements, and Educational Reform (Raymond A. Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres); (4) Culture and Education (Vandra Lea Masemann); (5) The Question of Identity from a Comparative Education Perspective (Christine Fox); (6) Equality of Education: A Half-Century of Comparative Evidence Seen From a New Millennium (Joseph P. Farrell); (7) Women's Education in the Twenty-First Century: Balance and Prospects (Nelly P. Stromquist); (8) Control of Education: Issues and Tensions in Centralization and Decentralization (Mark Bray); (9) Beyond Schooling: The Role of Adult and Community Education in Postcolonial Change (Anne Hickling-Hudson); (10) The Political Economy of Educational Reform in Australia, England, and the United States (Edward H. Berman, Simon Marginson, Rosemary Preston, and Robert F. Arnove); (11) Higher Education Restructuring in the Era of Globalization: Toward a Heteronomous Model? (Daniel Schugurensky); (12) Education in Latin America: Dependency, Underdevelopment, and Inequality (Robert Arnove, Stephen Franz, and Carlos Alberto Torres); (13) Education in Asia: Globalization and its Effects (John N. Hawkins); (14) Education in the Middle East: Challenges and Opportunities (Rachel Christina with Golnar Mehran and Shabana Mir); (15) Russia and Eastern Europe (Maria Bucur and Ben Eklof); (16) Education for All in Africa: Still a Distant Dream Joel Samoff with Bidemi Carrol; and (17) Comparative Education: The Dialectics of Globalization and its Discontents (Carlos Alberto Torres).