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This chapter explores the potential of transnational history for researching global higher education policy. It begins with an overview of transnational history as a perspective, demonstrating how it is, in part, a response to processes of globalization that have also transformed contemporary higher education. Second, it reviews key features of transnational history as a perspective that can enhance global higher education policy research. The third part takes dimensions of contemporary global higher education and discusses how these can be approached through a transnational historical perspective drawing on the features outlined. The chapter concludes by highlighting how a transnational historical approach can enable new insights and research questions as well as some challenges presented by this perspective. The spatial focus of the chapter is predominantly European higher education, though the implications are more general.

In this chapter we have broadly sketched the educational history of Aotearoa New Zealand to show that this historical backdrop offers a fascinating insight into contemporary debates. In the following chapters we adopt a thematic approach to the history of teacher preparation in Aotearoa New Zealand. We do not offer an institutional or chronological historical narrative, but rather, the chapters are interconnected as they re-trace, recall and re-tell this educational history. Our core thesis is that across the long history of teacher preparation these themes permeate the shifts and changes in educational policy and practice and that ruptures at particular historical moments are not unique. We draw on a number of historical examples to underscore the oftentimes personal impact of the wider policy environment and the educational stories of aspiring teachers. Importantly, we have documented the methodological approaches employed and the archival research that has influenced our reading of the materials.

In this chapter, the authors provide a historical overview of the development of comparative and international education societies throughout the earth. In most cases, these societies have gradually grown and continue to thrive; in other cases, some comparative education societies have become dormant and a few no longer exist. A historical analysis that outlines the rise and fall of comparative education societies is provided. An overview of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies is also discussed, including its lead organizational role in serving as a historical hub to help comparative education societies preserve and disseminate their respective histories. The chapter concludes with suggestions on how anyone can get involved to help contribute to the history preservation of comparative education at the individual, national, regional, and global levels.

We present and explain several reasons that special education as a field has not been served well by the lessons of our history, but has the extraordinary opportunity, if not responsibility, to learn from history and use these lessons to guide practice. Our premises include (a) special educators may be less aware of their past than professionals in other disciplines, and thus less likely to build on this past; (b) given the relatively short history of the field as we know it today, we have access to many leaders who shaped policy and practice in special education; and (c) special education faces crossroads in many respects, and these have the potential to drastically re-shape or re-define special education. As such, we believe that contextualizing our present and future direction in an understanding of our past is critical now more than ever.

This chapter traces the early beginnings of schools and schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand. We have drawn on archival evidence to identify shifting tensions between Māori and missionary, between Church and State and between local and national priorities. Despite its relative size, the history of New Zealand’s schools highlights their complex and competing origins. This educational landscape has been marked by emerging concerns and unresolved tensions regarding entry standards, academic and professional training, recruitment, and the knowledge, skills and dispositions a teacher ought to possess. There has been little consensus about how teachers should be prepared and where this training ought to occur. The absence of any uniform understanding or agreement about the effective professional training and preparation of teachers has induced a level of bureaucratization as competing interests sought to control the work of teachers.