Abstract Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Azerbaijan, this article examines the civics education program that existed in Azerbaijan in the 1990s and the early 2000s, prior to its incorporation into a newly created “life skills” (həyat bilgisi in Azerbaijani) course. It is argued that a disconnect between curriculum reform and classroom practice resulted in a missed opportunity for the “first

(2020). Childhood and Education in the United States and Russia: Sociological and Comparative Perspectives. European Education: Vol. 52, No. 4, pp. 352-353.

(2021). Media Review of “Entre Les Murs (the Class)” and “The Hate U Give”. European Education. Ahead of Print.

Abstract The articles in this cluster explore the past and present trajectories of educational change in Russia from the 18th century to the present day. The authors focus on the multiple social actors, visions, forces, and changes that in combination brought about Russia’s modern educational realities. The emphasis in these contributions is put upon the often-decisive role of local, grassroots-level

Abstract The global spread of degree courses taught in English as a Medium of Instruction raises questions about the identity or “branding” of English-taught degree programs in non-Anglophone countries and whether they differ from their equivalents in the national languages. To answer this question, we have examined a sample of master’s degree programs in the same domain, International Relations, across

Abstract One neglected aspect of the Gorbachev perestroika era in Russia [1985–1991] was the remarkable “pedagogy of cooperation” (or pedagogika sotrudnichestva) movement, a renewal of the experimental tradition in education. Central to this was Edward Dneprov, a brilliant and forceful individual whose views and personality substantially shaped the Gorbachev-era educational reform movement. Dneprov

Abstract Entrepreneurship education is seen as a way to get more women into their own businesses. This paper reports on pedagogical interventions designed to accomplish this. Policies on entrepreneurship education produced by the European Union from 2004 to 2018 were categorized according to the research questions: How are women to be educated? What subjects should be taught? And by whom? Policy analysis

Abstract Utilizing the minutes of preparations of a manuscript textbook on the history of medicine (1948-1953), the authors reconstruct how it was decided to depict the history of world and Russian medicine; in so doing sacralizing the Soviet state and wildly overstating its care for the health of Soviet people. The archival documents allowed the authors of the article to show how the aspirations and

(2020). Correction. European Education: Vol. 52, No. 4, pp. 354-354.

Abstract This essay considers the evolution of the historiography of eighteenth-century Russian education, emphasizing recent shifts in the dominant paradigm of secularization. It identifies three wide vectors (1) the place of the state as prime institution builder; (2) the pace of standardization; (3) the problem of “reflexivity,” or laying bare the assumptions underlying scholarly narratives. The

Abstract The article shows how stigmatization of misspelling predated modern German and Russian orthographies and how this attitude was imported to Russia from Prussia in the 19th century. Rules were difficult to learn and to teach, making mistakes inevitable. Grading based on the number of errors helped to control and discipline students and to manage teachers. The repressive nature of mass, compulsory

(2020). Russian Education Thirty Years Later: Back to the USSR? European Education: Vol. 52, Russia's Involuted Paths toward and within Educational Modernity, pp. 283-296.

Abstract Over the past nearly 30 years, Russian universities have been buffeted by external forces necessitating attempts to adjust to a fast-changing academic climate, both globally and regionally. Based on informally structured interviews of university faculty of different age groups and ranks, academic fields and regions of the country conducted between 2012 and 2018, this essay examines what transpires

Abstract Based on oral and written testimony of pupils and teachers, this essay examines the lived educational experience of the school-age cohort of children in Stalin’s Russia from 1931 to 1945. The state alone determined the structure and curricula of the nation’s schools. However, Soviet youngsters, their parents, and teachers responded to the center’s initiatives in ways that both embraced and

At the Conference of the Comparative Education Society in Europe—in Italy in May 2020—it had been intended to honor Thyge Winther-Jensen; who had died, after a short illness, in December 2019. Howe...

In the era of increased economic competitiveness and the global race to secure skilled labor, non-anglophone higher education institutions find themselves in a complicated situation. On one hand, t...

Abstract European Higher Education (HE) systems have been undergoing reforms for quality assurance and accreditation (QAA) in response to the Bologna process. Through the comparative exploration of the recontexualizations of European policy discourse on HE QAA in the Republic of Cyprus and Greece, we illustrate the differentially centralized and increased governmental control over the two HE sectors

Abstract This article discusses how an increased interest in the global, the international and the cross-national may be informed by the recently renewed focus upon the social and economic history of education. The history of school buildings in a comparative framework offered here illustrates how such approaches also have important contributions to make to the study of international and cross-national

Abstract Exclusive boarding schools in social environments where the meritocratic norm is prevalent are faced with a tension between parents’ desire to give their children a head start in the competition for educational qualifications, social prestige and jobs on the one hand and the powerful social norm of advancement by merit under conditions of “equal opportunity” on the other. This article looks

Abstract This study explores factors influencing the extent of engagement of international faculty in developing local research capacity. Drawing on ideas from research on knowledge sharing and on “intellectual commons,” we found that while the faculty share explicit knowledge in publications and tacit knowledge by providing apprenticeship opportunities for their students, they remain disengaged from

Abstract For the last 30 years international assessments have become more widespread and systematic, and their influence on education policy has increased: the OECD through the PISA tests has played a major role in this process. This article reflects on the case of the countries of the Southern Cone: Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. It analyzes the relationship between the OECD, PISA and the education

Abstract This article argues that the classical dualism between public and private universities turns out to be a terminological handicap for scholars who explore the current complexity of higher education landscapes. It focuses on the Cypriot public and private universities in order to illustrate specific manifestations of hybridity. The latter arise as these institutions oscillate between neoliberal-driven

Abstract This article adopts the skill ecosystem approach to the comparative analysis of skill mismatch across European regions within different skill formation regimes. Institutional arrangements of skill formation regimes are designed at national level. However, they are enacted in regions with very different Labor market and socioeconomic conditions, which mediate the relationship between the institutional

Abstract This paper investigated a policy-making debate in Chile, by examining the construction of the Netherlands as a new “reference society”. It focused on a reform agenda that aimed at a transformation of the neo-liberal school governance model. Based on the analysis of government documents, parliamentary debates, and media materials, the paper concludes that in addition to the consideration of

Abstract The aim of the paper was to analyze and evaluate the importance, scope, and applied forms of collaboration between higher education institutions (HEIs) operating in the Czech Republic and the nonacademic sphere. Data was obtained through questionnaire survey with competent managers of HEIs (N = 76). The study shows that the managers of the monitored HEIs consider collaboration with the nonacademic

Abstract This study investigates how nation is taught, learned, practiced, and performed in early childhood educational settings in Australia and Hungary. Analysis, based on comparative multi-sited ethnography, reveals nationhood as a taken for granted, unreflexively promoted framework for organizing social life. The “pedagogy of nation” operates in different ways in these two settings. In Australia

Abstract This paper discusses the comparative perspective of the European Modernity towards other civilizations, and the creation of comparative studies, and, for that matter, of comparative education. The paper argues that much of the debate on Eurocentrism neglects the fact that the European tradition includes also an inextricable self-reflective dimension, which has allowed for the emergence of

This paper reveals the complex intersectionalities of immigrant identity construction, nationalisms (and national exceptionalisms), and how Greek culture/language schools in the United States significantly influenced and created a Greek and Greek-American Identity. Drawing on the Chicago experience and the Socrates and Koraes Greek-American Schools, this paper interrogates the collaborative relationship

The Bologna reform aimed at creating a more transparent system of comparable degrees. Taking a demand-side viewpoint, we discuss two types of employer perception, namely, whether Belgian employers perceive Bologna as successful in facilitating the comparison of degrees and whether they are satisfied with the knowledge and skills of those of their employees who have acquired the new degrees. The main

The article presents the results of a research into Ukrainian state and university language policies, and a Ukrainian university community’s potential to become multilingual in terms of its foreign language proficiency and attitudes toward multilingual tertiary education. The results allow assuming that Ukrainian state acts and university regulations allow for multilingual tertiary education. Ukrainian

Drawing on comparative data from five universities in Latvia and Norway, this article examines universities’ strategic responses to a policy environment that calls for more entrepreneurial approaches in organizing research activity in higher education. This study concludes that strategic responses of universities to pressures for entrepreneurialism vary not only depending on the national policy context

This article explores influences on the development of collaborative learning practices in schools. Evidence from three cases in three countries is detailed and analyzed, using a theoretical framework concerned with school curricula: aims and intended learning outcomes; syllabus, learning and teaching methods; and assessment. In each of the three cases (England, Germany, and Lithuania), a review of

Evidence-informed policy and practice has been a trend as part of an effort to increase the use of research to improve education at all levels. In many countries, knowledge-brokering initiatives were established to stimulate links between research, policy, and practice. Drawing on a mapping of initiatives in seven countries, this article describes different organizational designs, and discusses potential

This article explores the perceptions and experiences of the professionals about integrational and academic programs for newly arrived minority language pupils in elementary reception classes in two Norwegian municipalities: Oslo and Trondheim. The data were collected through interviews, field conversations, and available relevant documents. The head teachers, subject coordinators, and reception teachers

This article investigates the contours of inequality in the context of institutional decline and polarization in educational attainment. Using household survey data collected in 2005–2006 by UNICEF, we conduct synthetic cohort analyses estimating the likelihood of transitioning to secondary and higher education for men and women; urban and rural residents; poor and wealthy; and ethnic majority and

This article examines what resources religious education teachers draw upon, in what ways, and under what conditions, to navigate between national religious/confessional ideology and interreligious values in education. The article is based on a year-long ethnographic research project on religious education in Greek-Cypriot schools. It shows the importance of teachers’ personal and professional biography

Many international scholarship programs expect that graduates will return home to apply their education for socioeconomic development, yet national contextual factors shape these anticipated outcomes. Through comparing Georgia and Moldova, this research examines how one contextual factor—the home government’s reforms—influenced U.S. higher education graduates’ pathways. Notably, the decade-old, pro-democratic

This article examines how broader cultural practices influence teachers teaching the Holocaust in Lithuania. This article uses the concept of the “cultural curriculum” to examine how community “stories” intersect with formal education. It finds that teachers feel they have become responsible for challenging long-standing cultural practices as well now. This is not always welcome because most are uncertain

This article demonstrates that foreign-born adults in Europe tend to participate less in adult education activities compared to native-born adults living in the same country. However, this is mainly explained through the job-related nature of nonformal education. Foreign-born adults tend to participate more in formal adult education than native-born adults in a range of countries. Based on analyses

In this article, we examine how the ideal university graduate is constructed in the European Commission’s documents on entrepreneurship education (EE). Our analysis illustrates how persuasive policy language determines the standards for educating entrepreneurial graduates to optimally meet the needs of the liberal market economy. We argue that the policy discourse on EE reformulates the idea of being

This article examines whether the way that PISA models item outcomes in mathematics affects the validity of its country rankings. As an alternative to PISA methodology, a two-parameter logistic model is applied to PISA mathematics item data from Italy and Spain for the year 2009. In the estimation procedure, item difficulty and dispersion parameters were allowed to differ across the two countries and

The Bologna Process affects the academic community, particularly faculty members who have to implement the process. This study is an initiative by a group of lecturers to evaluate the perception of faculty members in the implementation of the Bologna Process. The aim was to assess the evolution of their opinion on the process since a 2011 survey, and their degree of agreement with the European Higher

A simple search for recent news in academia leads to articles discussing increasing pressures on faculty. These range from the pressures to produce publications (Kuzhabekova, Hendel, & Chapman, 2015), to raise research funding (Dougherty et al., 2016), to demonstrate greater engagement with external stakeholders (Hazelkorn, 2015), to teach longer hours and to advise a greater number of students (Bowen

This article investigates careers of early-career academics in the Russian academic system as it strives to improve its position in the global academic landscape. The typology of “boundaried” and “boundaryless” careers is applied in order to analyze careers in Russia. Two types of academics were identified: “connectors” and “conservationalists.” “Connectors” are more likely to embrace research orientation

To raise university research productivity, the government of Kazakhstan introduced a requirement for university faculty members to publish in journals with a nonzero impact factor in order to qualify for promotion. A survey of faculty members at six universities was conducted to explore their response to the policy. The results suggest that a promotion-linked publication requirement may lift faculty

This special issue of European Education honors one of the founding figures in comparative and international education, Professor Andreas Kazamias. Andreas has often described himself as a scholar of multiple identities: a Greek Cypriot; a humanist intellectual and Socratic “gadfly”; a moral reformer; a university professor of comparative education; and a founder and key intellectual shaper of the

Using the critical work of Andreas Kazamias on the history and methods of comparative education as conceptual framework, we investigate the education (over a 200-year period) of the Slovak Roma. We position our story as paradigmatic of the dual processes of enlightenment and obscurantism with which we are familiar in thinking about the history of racial violence. The article describes the encounter

Professor Kazamias has argued that comparative education has lost its “soul,” by abandoning its historical and humanist episteme in the first half of the 20th century and turning to an ahistorical and nonhumanist social science today. This essay takes the readers on a journey across time and space in search of comparative education’s “soul,” briefly encountering a goddess in Greek mythology, a witch

In 2004, a reform report entitled “Democratic and Humanistic/ Humane Paideia in the Euro-Cypriot Polity: Prospects for Reconstruction and Modernization” was published by the Ministry of Education and Culture in the Republic of Cyprus. Professor Andreas M. Kazamias is held to have been the driving force behind this initiative, shaping both the form and the contents of the report. The article takes this

Emphasizing the important role of “history” within comparative education is the classic way, much celebrated in the writings of Andreas Kazamias, to treat this theme. This article uses a different perspective. The argument is that “comparative education” and “history” use two words as professional identifiers of a way of thinking and working. Metaphorically, they are wizard words, magical claims that

This article provides background on Kazamias’ historical comparative education work. Transnational history as means to respond to Kazamias’ call to “reinvent the historical” is introduced. The article demonstrates how the logics of transnational history differ markedly from the logics of comparison and transfer. The argument advanced is in favor of educational histories of the present, informed by

Can one person have so many layers? Can one person so embody the “protean episteme” (Kazamias, 2001) of comparative education? Important scholars are never one thing, changing through time and context as their thought evolves. As such, there are many iterations of Andreas Kazamias. He becomes who we need him to be. Our Proteus. There is (and remains) the young radical who, having made his home in the

This article uses a comparative historical approach to examine the Teachers for East Africa (TEA) and the Teacher Education in East Africa (TEEA) programs, an influential educational development effort that involved U.S. and British college graduates in East African schools and colleges during the decade of 1961–1971. Drawing on postcolonial theory and Andreas Kazamias’s humanistic view of education

As a graduate student I had the opportunity to study with Professor Andreas Kazamias and see his dynamic teaching and scholarship in action. This short reflection piece discusses the turn to Greek literature in Kazamias’s work and the enduring relevance it has today.

Thirteen years ago, I was hired by the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, as an assistant professor in comparative and international education (CIE). Andreas—Andy—had joined the department in 1964, as one of its founding members. He was retiring after 40 years on the faculty, and I was his replacement to move the University of Wisconsin (UW) CIE program

This article attempts a reading of Andreas M. Kazamias’s work and method as a persistent and firmly grounded attempt to “go against the tide” of an empirical/instrumentalist comparative education and toward a “modernist episteme.” Kazamias has been explicitly critical of the social-scientific-cum-positivist comparative education, while at the same time acknowledging the limitations of the traditional

This essay reminisces on the contributions of Professor Kazamias to my own thinking and assesses the imperative for comparative and international education to foster more complete and egalitarian societies across multiple historic and cultural contexts. “Paideia of the soul” is acknowledged as connected not only to the humanities but also to the social sciences, within which education is embedded.

This essay is to honor a wonderful colleague and friend over many years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. It is an ode that moves between poles of friendship and the academic. I being with two stories about Andy, alias Andreas; or is it the other way around? One could spend time with the Greek persona, aka Andreas, or one could engage with the American side, aka Andy. I gravitate toward “Andy

“Time present and time past, are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.” (T. S. Eliot)“Educating the mind (nous) without educating the soul (psyche) is no educ...

This article investigates the current state of faculty research activity within Tajik higher education institutions (HEIs), where the level of research productivity has substantially decreased in the past three decades. As part of a larger ethnographic study on professional lives of Tajik faculty members, we investigated and found enormous challenges to conducting research and becoming active researchers