Comparative Education books

The goal of the ARCIE volume is to examine current perspectives and future directions for the field using several essays as a context for discussion and analysis. The format of ARCIE pieces entails an analytic overview of published work in the field, noting key issues and future directions. It provides an important and well-cited international forum for the discussion of matters of comparative and international education theory, policy and practice.

It is important that early educators view sensitive topics not as problems, but as subjects that are part of our global society. Early educators need to engage children in conversations in which to consider and share diverse perspectives. Early educators also should examine their own experiences when addressing these serious issues. This volume contains chapters that invite conversations about sensitive issues to help educators, children and families use real-life experiences to construct knowledge about their world and other people.

Volume 13 relaunches the book series after a 9-year hiatus and addresses new directions in the field of educational ethnography. The authors in the book share methodological similarities, but their applications, contexts, treatments, and contributions to the field as evidenced here are unique and vary considerably. The diversity of views and perspectives of ethnographic theory and method in educational settings are on full display, from the street to urban and suburban classrooms and to college settings, where gender, race, class, and power dynamics impact learners, teachers, parents, and communities. Taken together, the chapters reinvigorate and redirect a new set of possibilities and opportunities in ethnographic research, while highlighting shifts, problems and new directions for the field.

As the target year of achieving Education for All development goals approached in 2015, there were discussions about the post-EFA agenda, a process parallel to setting the post-Millennium Development Goals. This transition should not be understood simply as a normative framework. It has coincided with changes in structure, actors, modes of interactions, and practices. The emergence of new types of donors who used to be recipients of aid is changing the landscape of international educational development. Transnational networks of civil society actors gained power to set the discourse at multiple levels, through their global mission-driven and expertise-based advocacy. Advanced communication technologies and broader participation increased the amount of ideas exchanged, while the global governance structure becomes more centralized in its decision making.