Based on the authors' wide reading in the field, this article suggests the notion of the narrative as a fitting and meaningful way of conceptualising and mapping the field of comparative education. Four prominent narratives can be identified in not only the field of comparative education (and the scholarly discourse on education) but also the…

Teachers matter. They make a difference in the life of the individual and the society at large. Hence, their education and training has always been at the centre of any government's education policy. This paper focuses on teacher education in Albania. The narrative describes and analyzes the main milestones in teacher education during the four…

A growing literature, much of it with cross-national comparisons, employs geographic lenses to secure insights into educational studies. Most of this literature focuses on schooling, though parts address kindergartens and higher education. The present paper, by contrast, employs geographic lenses to focus on the shadow education system of private…

We propose a decolonial-posthuman pedagogy for contemplating the idea of 'womanness' in postcolonial Pakistan. Since posthumanism disbands anthropocentrism while decoloniality subverts Westcentrisms, we combine them to upend the notions of passivity and muteness attributed to Pakistani women via western feminist discourses. By foregrounding…

In this paper, we discuss core ideas arising from research undertaken in a Leverhulme Trust (IN2016-002) funded international network project. The project examined youth activism, engagement and the development of new civic learning spaces within and across six countries (Australia, Canada, England, Hungary, Lebanon and Singapore). Arising from…

Education markets have spread worldwide over the past few decades. Frequently, the expansion of markets in education is presented by their promoters as a means to improve the opportunities of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged students. However, the evidence available shows that market-oriented policies that enhance competition and choice…

This Forum explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Higher Education (HE) sector through the experiences and perspectives in China, Malaysia and the UK, with schools and universities closed and teaching moved online with very short notice. Authors were given an open brief as to the nature of their contribution, reflecting the still…

Motivated by increasing Colombian immigration in Chile, this paper aims to understand the production of Colombian students attuned with the geopolitical discourses on immigrants in Santiago. Inspired by feminist geographers, it considers the nation as an affective device and geopolitics as the power asymmetries resulting from the encounter of…

Global university rankings seek to illustrate the performance of institutions on an international level and are used by many institutions to help them to reach strategic goals, as such, they have become synonymous to some as an indicator of quality and desirability. As global university rankings become further embedded as a basis on which…

Quality education is increasingly considered essential for human development. However, the mainstream approach to quality as a neutral technology often ignores deeply embedded issues of power relations. This article interrogates the taken-for-granted idea of 'quality education' by exploring the ways in which students navigate the assumption of…

It has often been lamented that girls are more likely not to attend or to drop-out (for example, because of gender preference by the parents, insecurity, pregnancy, amongst many other postulated factors) or that their achievement even if they stay in school is worse than boys. For the former, UNESCO introduced the Gender Parity Index (GPI), which…

European schools should improve their methods for teaching migrant students. The European Union has been making efforts to meet the needs of migrant students for some time. From the 2009 Eurydice report "Integrating Immigrant Children into Schools in Europe," which suggests measures to foster inclusion in the larger community and…

Germany's vocational education and training (VET) and corresponding teacher-education programmes are known worldwide for their integrated framework. Government legislation unifies companies, unions and vocational schools, and specifies the education and training required for students as well as vocational teachers. Changing from the Diplom…

To ratify possibilities for worldly linguistic connectivities and critical theorising there is a need to forgo the exclusionary preoccupation with English and Western critical theories. The debates informing the international circulation of Bourdieu's (1977, 1993, 1999, 2004) ideas provide methodological lessons for moving from critical sociology…

Comparative research in multilingual urban primary schools indicates that the pedagogical and political goals of schooling may operate at cross-purposes. Classroom observations and teacher interview-discussions were conducted in classes for immigrant children in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where the language of instruction is French, and in classes…