This comparative case analysis aims to understand what organizational conditions are related to the differences in the development of research among four traditional private universities in Latin America. Based on imprinting theory, the study analyzes how historical events and the founding conditions of each case study influence the processes of…

National governments rely on human rights and human capital rationales to justify why they seek to improve education through reform. Human rights discourse emphasizes a legal and moral right to education, whereas human capital discourse stresses the instrumental role of education in enhancing individual and national economic productivity. In…

This article examines the relationship between Black social movements in Brazil and the United States through over a century of formations of struggle. Drawing from a review of Black periodicals in three time periods ranging from twentieth-century print press to contemporary digital social media, this article affirms the significance of the…

This article addresses the issue of racial inequality in Brazil, specifically within the education system. We present statistical data highlighting the disparities between White and Black students regarding illiteracy rates, school attendance, and learning outcomes. We argue that traditional economic frameworks have difficulty incorporating racial…

We review research on the history of education policy in colonial sub-Saharan Africa and among the African Diaspora in the United States and Brazil through a political economy lens. While the supply of education was severely constricted in all of these cases, demand for education remained strong. Thus, even as authoritarian states have attempted…

This article proposes that the concept of "educational state of exception" (based on Giorgio Agamben's idea of the "state of exception") can productively explain a history of school administration, teachers, and class organization observed by the author at a school in a leper village. The educational state of exception found at…

In a world characterized by a formal global consensus on norms of "Education for All," countries face growing social pressures to rationalize their educational institutions around a global and standardized set of best practices. In this context, I argue that national assessments are part of a more general set of organizational structures…

The present article analyzes dissertations written by international doctoral graduates at Teachers College during the first two decades of the twentieth century. By focusing on the earliest period of the doctoral program, our work seeks to understand the role of the dissertation archive in producing and governing the emerging field of academic…

Social issues of today are rooted in history, and the study of contemporary issues would thus benefit from tracing their history. In Tanzania, Nyerere's "ujamaa" philosophy and the accompanying education for self-reliance (ESR) policy offer a criterion relevant today in pedagogical analysis. Tanzania is currently implementing…

For the past several decades there has been a solid research and policy consensus that school level leadership is an important lever for school improvement and is an integral component of the policy implementation process. Although broadly concerned with both improvement and policy implementation, the field of comparative education has engaged…

During the 1950s the field of comparative education was steered by the American idea of progress. The Comparative Education Society was founded under an assumption that research and understanding of education worldwide is progressive, and thus social engineering through education could ameliorate poverty, inequality, disease, and other…

Investment in girls' education is offered as a salve to the Global South that will alleviate poverty, prevent terrorism, and curb gender-based violence. Rather than treat this thesis and its evidentiary basis as axiomatic, we examine some of the conditions for the intelligibility of this crisis, prevalent in much international development and…

Historically, education policy has frequently framed American Indians, a contested term long-used to describe peoples indigenous to the United States, through a deficit-lens as "other." While "CER" publishes research that looks at other countries as a point of analysis, rarely has it included articles that compare supposedly…

Internationalization is a rapidly growing trend among higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world. This article situates internationalization within comparative education by theorizing it as processes of global diffusion and localization. It analyzes survey data from administrators at 1,439 HEIs in 137 countries to understand their…

This article examines "government-registered medersas" in Mali and suggests that their appeal and expansion are due to their unique and innovative integration of Western and Islamic educational epistemologies (not simply subjects). Registered medersas respond to parental demands for the early introduction of "secular"…