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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.

Although universities have been decentralized for academic freedom and autonomy, resources are being increasingly centralized, and the role of central administration is growing for efficiency and excellence reasons. At the same time, a division of labor is progressing by assigning specific tasks to professionals. The professionals are also centrally managed. Educational development was introduced by central administration to cope with the massification and quality assurance of higher education. Although it played a great part in promoting educational reform, it also suffered from the rejection of academics and the lack of methodology. Unlike ITC service and student service, educational development touches the autonomy of academics and is always torn between the central administration and academics. This chapter analyzes the structural and cultural difficulty of educational development in Japan by tracing its historical development and by comparing to other countries.

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.

This chapter will situate the global paradigm shift toward Post-Education-For-All (Post-EFA) not only in the policy trends in the field of international education development, but also in the academic context of international relations and comparative education.

The chapter highlights three dimensions which characterize the paradigm shift; namely, discourse on norms, diversifying actors, and the changed mode of communication and participation in the global consultation processes. The existing formal structure of the EFA global governance is based on multilateralism which recognizes sovereign nation-states, representing national interests, as the participants. However, such an assumption is eroding, given that there is a growing number of state and nonstate actors who influence decision-making not only through conventional formal channels, but also informally. Urging the revision of theories of multilateralism, the chapter introduces the attention given to nontraditional donors and horizontal networks of civil society actors in this volume.

The introduction also shows that that the widening basis of participation in the global consultation processes on post-EFA and advanced communication technology have changed the ways in which discourse is formulated. While the amount and the speed of exchanging information have been enhanced and different types of actors have been encouraged to take part, it also obliges scholars to adopt innovative methods of analyzing discourse formation.

The chapter also demonstrates the importance of the focus on the Asia-Pacific region, which is composed of diverse actors who often underscore Asian cultural roots in contrast to Western hegemony. By focusing on the discourse, actors, and the structure through which the consensus views on the post-EFA agenda were built, the volume attempts to untangle the nature of the post-EFA paradigm shift, at the global, Asia-Pacific regional, and national levels.

This article put forward two claims. First, it argues that, historically, the rationale for education has shifted from religious and national indoctrination to, in the more recent neoliberal period, human capital and the related notion of individual empowerment. Second, the article argues that the recent shift toward individual empowerment is reflected in international organizations’ (IOs) changing emphases in education. IOs’ educational agenda has undergone various changes since their early work in the 1960s: From the structural expansion of national education systems to the measurement of individual educational achievement through a focus on competencies and, most recently, individual psychosocial development.

Based on a content analysis of 60 documents from 38 IOs involved in international education networks between 1990 and 2015, this work identified an expanding field of IOs directing attention to the mental capabilities of a learner. The proliferated model of an individual actorhood reflected in these novel assessment designs will be presented and embedded in wider discussions about the cultural construction of the individual in contemporary world polity.

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.

This chapter presents a theoretical and evidence-based investigation of the contribution that national educational systems make to the development of and transition to a knowledge economy in the Arabian Gulf, generally, and Saudi Arabia, specifically. The challenges to creating an Arabian Gulf knowledge economy are twofold. One is a functional and structural challenge of developing a knowledge economy-oriented mass education system. The other is a cultural and contextual challenge of aligning Arabian Gulf expectations, traditions, and norms with institutionalized expectations for knowledge economies. The knowledge economy development challenge that is specific to national versus non-national Gulf populations, information and communication technology (ICT), and formal mass education systems is highlighted. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role that national innovation systems play in knowledge economy development in the Arabian Gulf countries.

This chapter examines the evolution and legacy of African socialism and the features of postcolonial educational transformation in Africa. Drawing on critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature on African socialism, the chapter discusses the role of the state in educational transformations with illustrations from selected countries. The failed promises of African socialism and elements of continuity emerge within a complex suite of factors that influenced postcolonial development in education and other sectors. Empirical research on educational transformation in African countries offers important insights into the difficulties of implementing socialist and other development policies in African countries influenced by global trends.

This chapter outlines some theoretical, historical and analytical themes covering national, trans-national and international trends in open education. It starts by looking at the social, economic and political drivers for education systems in general, and how openness has been used to widen access through attacking the iron triangle of education: access, quality and cost (open as a door). It then looks at the more recent technological and ideological developments that have aided openness (open as a book); including the central role that open licensing of digital materials (open as a right) has played in changing the social and economic drivers of education and in particular open educational resources. Next, it looks at the importance of open innovation, social innovation and communities of practice for open education (open as a relationship) and includes a comparison between the development of open source software and the development of open educational resources. It goes on to consider the impacts of all these on national and international policy (open as a border) before reviewing the social and economic role of open education from the perspectives of lifelong learners, students, educational institutions and educational publishers (open for business in the future). The chapter concludes by forecasting possible trends in open education for the next 15 years.

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the dichotomous nature of two World Bank educational goals and examine how enrollment growth became prioritized over quality in Tanzania. Nestled within the theoretical framework of developmental discourse, the chapter begins with a historical review of World Bank educational policy, exploring Tanzania's lending relationship with the Bank. The chapter next evaluates the new World Bank 2020 educational strategy using the Tanzanian context to draw attention to policy strengths and weaknesses. Finally, using current research regarding World Bank policy in Tanzania, this chapter explores the implications of the new strategy on the next installment of Tanzania's SEDP policy. By locating the intersections of these policies, one may gauge a better understanding as to why the past trend of flooding Tanzania's classrooms with students has had the effect of eroding educational quality.