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In this chapter, we present a critical engagement with the methodology that each research team presenting a case study in this book from England, Arab Israel, Northern Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States adopted.

Education is a cultural project that consists of history, narrative and faith. The Black, Asian Minority Ethnicity (BAME) and senior leaders representing marginalised groups that we talked to in this research all stated that their faith, and religion was central to their service as an educational leader. The faiths represented in our research are Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and no faith where a humanitarian approach is taken. The chapter presents the scientific significance of what values underpin these leaders’ behaviours, and to understand how their values align with legislation, education policy and the values found in Education Governance Systems.

A constructivist comparative analysis approach was adopted to address four research questions. First, how do the senior-level leaders describe and understand how school governance systems and school commissioners empower them to develop school communities as societal innovators for equity and renewal for peace in our time? Second, how do they describe and understand the role mentors, and/or advocates play to support their navigation through the governance systems? Third, to what extent do they believe a cultural change is required to empower them in school communities to Empower Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal for peace in our time? Finally, how can the findings be theorised to generate a theory of knowledge to action through impact strategies within an international comparative analysis framework?

Each of the five international cases collected the narrative biographies of up to 15 superintendents, or chief executive officers of multi-academy trusts of colour. In the Northern Ireland case, eight religiously divided key agents of change were selected as an equivalence for the governance structures in the other five case studies. The total number of senior-level leaders participating in the five case studies was 40.

Each author read their findings through Gross’ (2014) Turbulence Theory and typology to categorise the level and the impact of the challenges the key agents of change need to navigate as they mediate between the governance systems. Gross (2014, p. 248) theory of turbulence is used as a metaphor and states that ‘turbulence can be described as “light” with little or no movement of the craft. “Moderate” with very noticeable waves. “Severe” with strong gusts that threaten control of the aircraft. “Extreme” with forces so great that control is lost and structure damage to the craft occurs’. The chapter identifies the findings were read through the theory of turbulence to reveal the state of the Education Governance Systems and their impact on empowering cosmopolitan citizens to participate fully and freely in societal interactions and cooperation between diverse groups. The authors’ chapters are subject to a comparative analysis that took place at the European Conference for Educational Research Annual Conference in two large seminars (Taysum et al., 2017) in Denmark, further developed by the editors and committed to peer-review.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Precise and rigorous international comparative research requires methodological reflections and determinations at each step of the empirical research process. This chapter analyzes the precision and rigor of international comparative higher education research by diagnosing their comparative methodology, particularly their country selection and case sampling. It evaluates 202 studies that have been published in journals of both higher education and comparative education, because international comparative higher education intellectually and institutionally intersects both interdisciplinary fields. The major empirical findings show a relative lack of explicit and elaborate justification strategies, as well as a lack of comparative methodology. But they also show that the intellectual and institutional context, represented here in the form of the journals, influences the implementation of comparative methodology. The use of comparative methodologies is more thorough in the context of comparative education, where a continuous debate about the theoretical and methodological aspects of comparative studies takes place. One of the implications of the study is that the debate regarding comparative methodologies within higher education research should be intensified.

Scholarly literature on the Internationalization of Education has generated important theories, debates, and insights supporting in-depth understandings of the field, yet we lack comprehensive reviews exploring the design, implementation, and impact of practical approaches. The present review addresses this gap, mapping the literature on international curriculum design, identifying trends and themes across approaches and pedagogies while revealing limitations and lack of attention to issues that inhibit practice in the field. It highlights the privileging of “instrumental,” or quantifiable skills-based curricula, over “transformative” internationalization dedicated to social justice and equity, and observes important disconnects between theory and practice: publications in the field offer critical conceptualizations of what internationalized curricula should achieve and why but with little attention to specific content and teaching practice that would lead to achieving these objectives. The review further analyzes such disconnect in the literature dedicated to decolonial internationalizing pedagogies, while simultaneously illuminating how prevailing decolonial theories of international education erase and ignore parts of the world. It concludes by contending that approaches to the internationalization of curriculum would benefit from increased practical frameworks that could guide educators, practitioners, and students in crucial conversations at the intersections of social justice and International Education.

The human development and capability approach (HDCA) and its associated participatory method is receiving growing attention as a useful conceptual development for comparative international education. HDCA challenges the economism so prevalent in world development thinking and, instead, looks at development as a process of enhancing persons’ incrementally achieved substantive freedoms from deprivations. The centrality of the person replaces the centrality of income growth.

The application of HDCA to the study of the role of education that promotes social justice change is illustrated by using an empowerment-capability framework to the long-term study of the benefits of village schooling for rural girls in western China.

Using HDCA to identify influences on social change, we derive a much more nuanced and valuable multi-dimensional view of human development, which enables us to draw broad implications for more effective policy. National policies should use a multi-dimensional informational base including equality, sustainability, and non-market dimensions of well-being as well as market production.

This chapter wishes to reiterate the crucial distinction, made by Max Weber as early as 1922, between scientific research and political action, and to recall the principles of separation and mediation from which the comparative and international approach in education sometimes derives. The current policies of education in a globalized world, planned at an international level, tend to euphemize cultural differences, and finally impose a functional and normative approach of what is meaningful, in the education arena. As a matter of fact, the concepts that comprise a language, that are disseminated and become established in a social world, are culturally rooted, though they are borne of history through dynamic and linguistic uses. By neglecting the social and cultural provenance of words and meanings, there is a danger that one can end up with a comparability based on functional equivalencies alone. The purely instrumental rationality that favors the spread of such frameworks or interpretative models appears indifferent to questions of meaning and culture, apart from being irrational on an axiological level. In keeping with the researcher’s responsibility to mediate, one must promote clarification and mutual understanding, replacing the standardization of words with a strong and critical illumination of the semiotic variations generated by their use. For this to be realized, efforts to challenge and reconceptualize the field deserve sustained theoretical tools promoting the very hermeneutic task of comparative education, in ways that more pertinently bridge a diversity of intellectual, professional, and societal cultures, in the context of a global program of neutralization of differences and otherness.

This study offers a comparative analysis of attitudes to small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) internationalisation in two different cultural settings, Wales and Brittany. The purpose of this paper is to conduct an in-depth investigation of attitudes to internationalisation among food and drink SMEs using mixed methods and focussing on both SMEs that internationalise and those that do not. This leads to a more comprehensive understanding of the issues influencing attitudes to SME internationalisation, which could facilitate policy development for such companies.

Mixed methods are used in this study to provide a richness of data in investigating this complex issue. The majority of research in this field has focussed on quantitative research, however, this study heeds calls for more plurality in research on SME internationalisation to achieve a more detailed understanding of the issues affecting SME internationalisation. This is achieved through an online questionnaire of 169 food producing SMEs in Wales and Brittany, informed by International Entrepreneurship theory. A second phase of semi-structured interviews provides more context to the questionnaire findings, with 37 interviews conducted with respondents from the questionnaire. Each phase was conducted independently, with findings triangulated for further investigation.

Companies of all characteristics have the ability to internationalise; however, cultural differences were observed between Wales and Brittany in both attitudes and the conditions for internationalisation. Breton SMEs displayed more proactivity to internationalisation, stemming from more favourable conditions, a greater reputation for food and more confidence. Conversely, Welsh SMEs were more reactive, relying on government support in encouraging internationalisation. Breton SMEs also benefitted from the strong cultural identity of food products, especially through the Produit en Bretagne brand and its network of producers.

The study makes both a theoretical and methodological contribution to research on SME internationalisation. The comparative study of Wales and Brittany is significant in understanding cultural influences to internationalisation in two regions where the food and drink industry represents an important part of the economy. The focus on a single industry is significant in understanding the particularities of internationalisation within an industrial context, as findings from studies across multiple industries are considered less generalisable. A methodological contribution is sought through using mixed methods to provide a more comprehensive study.

Comparative education and international education are central themes in the field of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D). Policies, projects, and practices around technology are often created and enacted based on best practices compared across multiple contexts and disciplines. As such, ICT4D research is at the nexus of understanding how youth can be empowered through technology, teacher pedagogy can be enhanced through technology, and how marginalized communities can leverage technology to leapfrog into the 21st century. In this essay, the authors explore these themes as a way to enforce the synergies among scholars in the fields of ICT4D and comparative and international education.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some lessons drawn from a comparative approach to the issue of the effectiveness in labour law.

The paper discusses the consensus on variable ineffectiveness in labour law and describes some different ways of improving effectiveness.

The issue of effectiveness is not specific to labour law. However, labour law seems particularly subject to ineffectiveness, due to the imbalance of power in labour relations, resulting from the inherent inequality of the parties. A comparative discussion necessarily explored the “standard” issues of application, monitoring and, sanctions to deal with the ineffectiveness of labour law. The present debate particularly highlighted the problems in drafting and content of the law that contribute to non‐compliance.

The paper raises the following question: what effective labour law and for whom?

There is a lack of knowledge transfer regarding administrative challenges and interpersonal experiences of participatory research designs. Aside from the question of whether the research is valid, researchers often have to answer questions regarding the process itself: how did it actually work? The mystery thickens when research and collaborative structures take place beyond and across national and/or cultural borders. Research traditions differ and diverse academic socialisation backgrounds can take a long time to decode. Participatory approaches are still the exception, and in certain research communities they may even be rather exotic. The set-up of collaborative structures and approaches to the field enables or hinders participatory approaches that have proven key in realising inclusive education. This chapter aims to provide thoughts on and insights into the importance, opportunities, and possible pitfalls of planning participatory research across national and cultural borders. It glimpses behind the scenes of mere research procedures to better understand the challenges and explain the opportunities that come with participatory approaches in international contexts.