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The chapter identifies and analyzes scholarly discourses that framed understanding of change and directed further reforms in post-socialist education over the past two decades. It discusses the origins of these discourses, their theoretical underpinnings, evolution, and cultural biases. The analysis of scholarly texts published on post-socialist education draws on methods of discourse analysis and utilizes the concept of sensemaking and the lens of translation to deconstruct how educational change is framed. Most of the identified discourses – restoration, importation, revolution and evolution, transformation and innovation, crisis and survival, glocalization, educational borrowing, system convergence, education for social transformation – originated outside either education or the post-socialist region itself in transitology studies, dependency theory, world system theory, and social reproduction theory. The resultant discourses carried over or challenged the underlying theoretical assumptions, exposed cultural sensitivity, or otherized the post-socialist region. The chapter identifies emerging scholarship that deconstructs framing of the same post-socialist educational phenomena. These emerging approaches reflect local and national searches for identity rather than global agendas. Contrary to the earlier prediction that with the end of the cold war, economic, political, and social institutions would converge into one monolithic world order, the chapter argues that the contemporary world today has come to display diversity, particularism, multiple voices, and the beginning of new histories. This study identifies emerging lines of research that look into the construction of meanings and expose cultural biases, while offering original conceptualization of two decades of scholarship on post-socialist educational change.

Most comparative education research has included investigation of dimensions of educational reform but not all research in the field has focused concertedly on reform in relation to the realities in practice. In the latter half of the 20th century comparativists underscored the need to investigate implementation issues, not just reform policies, as had often been the case in earlier comparative research, since time had shown that political processes did not always equate with educational outcomes. Reforms can be thwarted altogether, significantly modified or mediated in practice, embraced with qualification, or differentially implemented across regions or levels within a given country. Reform implementation might produce intended and unintended change (for better or for worse); or no change at all might be the outcome; or change might occur ahead of reform. Some of the most fascinating findings in comparative research are dichotomous considerations of change such as policy versus practice, ideal versus real, de facto change versus de jure change, intended and unintended outcomes of reform, grass-roots (bottom–up) versus centralized (top–down) reforms, and de facto change legitimized-after-the-fact through reform or new policy.

In recent years, interest in educational issues in the Muslim world has grown rapidly. This interest runs parallel with a media-led exploration of all things Muslim and the ideas that are fundamental to the tenets of Islam. This trend in examining the educational issues that exist in countries that are predominantly Islamic in history, culture, and belief, is part of a wider awareness of the educational elements of a globalized system of commerce, communication, education, and modernization. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has embraced many facets of globalization, striving to become a regional power and a new financial and commercial hub in the Middle East and a high-tech center in a globally oriented society. Along with other Arab nations, the UAE has recognized the strategic role played by education in national development and modernization.

In 1992, Mexican authorities and Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, (SNTE, National Education Workers Union) signed an agreement to decentralize the educational system called ANMEB (National Agreement on the Modernization of Basic Education), in which the Ministry of Education transferred basic education services to the 32 states of the country. Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP, the Federal Ministry of Education) still had the power to allocate money and enforce a national curriculum. SNTE, considered the largest and most powerful union in Latin America with 1.5 million affiliates, allowed the reform with the condition of keeping its status as national union.

Over the past 30 years, China has made dramatic changes and improvements in various educational areas, including the educational technology field. These changes have been supported by policies initiated by the country's central government. This chapter reviews the historical development of China's educational technology policies, paying particular attention to the evolutionary process, and examining policy features that have influenced Chinese educational development. The Chinese education technology framework encourages the use of educational technology to address more ambitious goals for economic and social development and thus serves as an important catalyst for advancing Chinese education.

This chapter sheds light on long-term trends in the level and structural dynamics of investments in Russian human capital formation from government, corporations, and households. It contributes to the literature discussing theoretical issues and empirical patterns of modernization, human development, as well as the transition from a centralized to a market economy. The empirical evidence is based on extensive utilization of the dataset introduced in Didenko, Földvári, and Van Leeuwen (2013). Our findings provide support for the view expressed in Gerschenkron (1962) that in late industrializers the government tended to substitute for the lack of capital and infrastructure by direct interventions. At least from the late nineteenth century the central government's and local authorities' budgets played the primary role. However, the role of nongovernment sources increased significantly since the mid-1950s, i.e., after the crucial breakthrough to an industrial society had been made. During the transition to a market economy in the 1990s and 2000s the level of government contributions decreased somewhat in education, and more significantly in research and development, but its share in overall financing expanded. In education corporate funds were largely replaced by those from households. In health care, Russia is characterized by an increasing share of out-of-pocket payments of households and slow development of organized forms of nonstate financing. These trends reinforce obstacles to Russia's future transition, as regards institutional change toward a more significant and sound role of the corporate sector in such branches as R&D, health care, and, to a lesser extent, education.

This chapter compares the historical development and current state of comparative pedagogy (CP) in four Slavonic South East European Countries – Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia. The authors also aim to put the historical background and contemporary developments of CP as a science and academic discipline in their countries on the worldwide comparative education (CE) map.

The chapter starts with a short definition of the two streams of CP development: the practical problem-solving nature of comparative studies; and the development of academic CP as a separate branch of the science of pedagogy. The history of CP in the four countries is divided into four historical periods: (1) 19th century until World War I (1918); (2) interwar years (1919–1941); (3) from 1945 until 1989; (4) from 1989 to the present. The development of CP during each period is examined in both national and comparative aspects and is analyzed within the appropriate political, social, and economic context. Some scientific-pedagogical factors are also discussed, with the goal of providing a better understanding of the specific features of CP in the individual countries and in the region as a whole. On the one hand, the analysis shows common characteristics in CP development, mostly influenced by the fact that the historical development of the science of pedagogy (accompanied by the teacher training tradition and the education system structure) was strongly influenced by German theoretical and practical pedagogy in all SSEE countries. On the other hand, the comparison reveals some differences, especially between Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia.

Growth in female tertiary enrollment has been accompanied by persistent gender differentiation within systems of higher education worldwide. We identify three dimensions of female “status” in higher education – overall female enrollments, sex segregation across tertiary levels, and sex segregation across fields of study – and we offer a conceptual framework for understanding cross-national similarity and variability on these dimensions. Commonalities across countries reflect the interaction of global pressures for expansion and democratization of education with persistent cultural representations of “gender difference.” Variability can be attributed, in part, to the different ways in which global cultural and structural pressures have been manifested within particular socio-historical settings.

This chapter offers an alternative to mainstream policy studies analysis of educational policy in postcommunist Ukraine. Taking its many insights from Foucault-inspired studies of education policy (Besley and Peters, 2007; Doherty, 2006, 2007; Fejes and Nicoll, 2007; Fimyar, 2008a, 2008b; Lindblad and Popkewitz, 2004; Marshall, 1998; Masschelein, Simons, Bröckling, and Pongratz, 2007; Peters, 2001, 2004, 2006; Peters and Besley, 2007; Popkewitz, 2007; Tikly, 2003), this chapter identifies and examines a new domain of analysis, termed in this chapter policy rationalities or policy why(s). Policy rationalities are conceptualized in this chapter as structures distinct from policy discourses that enable the emergence of some discourses and constrain the emergence or reception of others. “Conditions of possibility,” “background practices,” or “epistemes” are some other ways of thinking about the abstract – yet important for the study of policy – term of “policy rationalities.” Fourteen policy documents and 17 years of policy-making (1991–2008) represent textual and temporal borders of analysis. The official authorship of the documents is limited to the three state actors, namely, the President, Parliament, and the Cabinet of Ministers. The rationale for not including the ministerial documents in the analysis is explained in the chapter. The main methods employed by the study are deconstruction and discourse analysis. The chapter discusses three sets of policy rationalities: the rationalities of nation- and state-building, the rationalities of comparison and critique, and, what I will call, the rationalities of “catching-up” Europeanization. The study also traces the textual constructions of the models of individual, society, and the state as well as the definitions of education, upbringing, and educational governance in the documents under analysis. The chapter makes an important contribution to the current debates in policy sociology and governmentality studies by mapping out a new terrain of inquiry, i.e., policy rationalities, as an important starting point for the analysis of educational reform and change.