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This chapter provides an examination of the characteristics of comparative and international education research published in 2020 as well as an overview of the trends in this research since 2014. This analysis of published research includes a special focus on authors situated in the Global South as well as those authors who are affiliated with organizations outside of academic (i.e., professional, non-teaching organizations). These two focus characteristics reflect the shifting composition of authors and research in comparative and international education in the twenty-first century as well as the professionalization aspirations of the field of comparative and international education more broadly. Evidence from the seven years of data collection suggests that there is a marked shift toward increasingly more co-authored research, a shift from predominantly qualitative methods to non-empirical research content, and a rise in topic oriented research over the otherwise dominant single-country study in comparative and international education research.

Neo-institutional theory has provided a productive perspective on comparative and international education phenomena since the 1970s. Yet, recent critical discourse about educational phenomena investigated through a neo-institutional lens has been somewhat one-sided. The authors reexamine neo-institutional theory and its application to comparative and international education by demonstrating the ways that the theory frames both macro- and micro-level educational phenomena. The ability to shift the discourse about neo-institutional theory from a largely macro-level framework to one capable of investigating educational changes occurring at the micro level is vital to understanding the comprehensiveness of national educational systems and the ways that both world culture and individual agency contribute to these systems. Specifically, using the empirical application of neo-institutional theory to the intersection of information and communication technology (ICT) and internationally comparative educational data, the macro and micro levels of educational phenomena can be productively examined. In so doing, this chapter shifts the discourse on how and why neo-institutional theory reflects cross-national educational trends and micro-contextual effects on education worldwide.

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.

The intellectual and academic legitimacy of Comparative Education has been a critical issue in the international debate for a long time now. The fragility of the field is well known and understood. Despite frictions and misunderstandings, there are academic and professional structures robust enough to sustain the identity of the field in numerous countries on all continents. In Romania, there are no systematic concerns related to Comparative Education as an epistemologically autonomous field. Moreover, we cannot even argue for the existence of enough academic infrastructures to support Comparative Education as a research direction. But as countries in the world cannot afford to ignore global trends in terms of economy, technology, culture, Romania cannot disregard developments of educational policies and practices in Europe and throughout the world. Globalization and interconnections between contemporary societies raise common challenges for education systems in the world, and these are eventually reflected in national academic discourses. The major objectives of the present chapter are the following: (1) proposing an inventory of causes that led to the delay in establishing Comparative Education as an autonomous research field in Romania and (2) identifying progresses and accumulations that could lead to establishing Comparative Education as an explicit rather than tangential research field in Romania.

In this chapter, the authors analyze the academic field of comparative education in Spanish speaking Latin America as a contested construction both in epistemological and political dimensions. First, the authors provide a brief historical account of the origin and development of comparative education in the region since the nineteenth century. Next, they focus on the current state of the field by addressing three aspects: (1) the institutional basis, specially the development of comparative education societies; (2) an account of the contributions of international organizations, both in terms of studies that have been recently conducted and of the development of data bases; and (3) an analysis of prevailing topics as well as theoretical and methodological approaches in a sample of articles published during the 2010-2017 period. The authors conclude by summarizing the main aspects of the current situation, and pointing to future epistemological and political challenges for the field in the region.

The main aim of this chapter is to discuss the conceptualization of comparative pedagogies within Continental European and Anglophone traditions, and to discuss the importance of comparative pedagogy within the contemporary comparative educational research as such. The chapter opens with the issue of naming and translation of the key terminology, notably pedagogy, comparative pedagogy, and vzgoja (Erziehung in German and vospitanie in Russian) – a concept which implies the teacher’s intentional guidance of children in their moral, personal, social, aesthetical, physical, and spiritual advancement. The chapter presents a brief history of the development of pedagogy as a distinctive science, and proceeds with the discussion on pedagogy’s identity. Due to multifaceted understanding of pedagogy in Continental Europe, the chapter focuses on the academic tradition in Slovenia and wider area of former Yugoslavia. Further, the role of comparison in different contemporary historical periods of pedagogy’s development is explained. The chapter shows that comparative pedagogy has different meanings in different academic traditions. The main difference between that Continental Europe and the Anglophone world is in the knowledge base they built on (pedagogy vs. other social sciences), and the focus they place on endogenous and exogenous factors influencing the nature of education systems and pedagogical processes. The author finally proposes a new definition of comparative pedagogy; a definition which takes pedagogy as its knowledge base, but is also informed with a long tradition of comparative education research based on other social sciences.

This chapter synthesizes the key themes and issues from across the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2013, and reflects on how the input from the regional society presidents and representatives was developed in each section of the review. Ways to think about making the Annual Review a reflective process for the field as a whole, and to engender input from all corners of the global comparative and international education community are suggested as well.

The authors of this chapter focus on the development of comparative education in 10 countries of Eastern and Central Europe. A historical approach is applied to the study of the main characteristics of comparative education. The first part of the chapter is devoted to the origin of comparative education studies in this region from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries till the end of the nineteenth century. The second part of the chapter examines the process of establishment of comparative education as a science and the appearance of the first lecture courses on comparative education in some countries of this region from the beginning of the twentieth century till the end of World War II. The third part presents the state of comparative education during the years of socialism – from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fourth part surveys the modern development of comparative education in Eastern and Central Europe from the beginning of democratic changes in 1989 to the present day. While presenting comparative education in each historical period, the authors first show the most prominent comparativists, then emphasize on comparative education as a university discipline, and finally synthesize the main characteristics of the development of comparative education during the period of view. The chapter concludes with some generalizations on the four periods.

Several countries in South Asia face the challenge of ineffective educational reforms manifest in increasing rates of school failure and poor learning outcomes after embarking along education for all. Critical voices from the South have questioned the relevance and appropriateness of ideas that have shaped these reforms. Narratives from the region tell us that importation of educational concepts and policy orientations have led to the dismantling of existing structures and processes of education, creating new forms of inequities and disadvantage. The sheer scale and diversity of populations within the region poses formidable challenges and opportunities for contextual innovation. The construction of national imaginaries in the diverse societies of South Asia has the potential to provide new discourses to educational reform; going beyond the abstract goals set by disconnected international experts and the institutional processes they represent. This chapter deliberates on the need to establish a persuasive critical perspective that can influence and shape the trajectories of policy and practice, research and theorization, within the field of comparative education in South Asia, and the global south.

This chapter reports on a project undertaken during the author's two-term tenure as President of The World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) to document the history of this organization. The WCCES was founded at the First World Congress of Comparative Education, held in Ottawa, Canada in 1970. The author attended that First World Congress as a young academic and has subsequently attended five of the eleven World Congresses held to date. The two-volume Proceedings of the First World Congress of Comparative Education Societies was helpful in commencing this project.