Comparative Education Review

During the 1950s the field of comparative education was steered by the American idea of progress. The Comparative Education Society was founded under an assumption that research and understanding of education worldwide is progressive, and thus social engineering through education could ameliorate poverty, inequality, disease, and other mid-twentieth-century challenges. This essay speculates on the future of a field that no longer assumes that more or better understanding about education will lead to better consequences. However, rather than conceding defeat, the essay offers examples from an agenda that is necessary to promote education for sustainability. Progress is still one guiding star for researchers, among others stars in the constellation. The Comparative and International Education Society can still contribute to a global conversation on sustainable development. However, the essay concludes by noting several key challenges for the organization.

International development and education are often described as embodying colonized, capitalist, and modernist knowledge and practices. I take the position that as educators, our identities and positionalities, while not determinant, do affect our pedagogy of knowledge (re)production in these fields. Using critical autoethnography as methodology, and drawing on postcolonial theory, I explore how my experiences and positionality as an educator of color from the Global South influence my content and pedagogical practices in an international development and education program in a North American university. I discuss and analyze the diversity of content I select, my pedagogical approaches, and how I use my personal experiences from the Global South as teaching tool. I argue that as educators, our experiences do matter in ways that move beyond essentialism to enrich the learning experiences.

Links between international large-scale assessment (ILSA) methodologies, international organization (IO) ideologies, and education policies are not well understood. Framed by statistical constructivism, this article describes two interrelated phenomena. First, OECD/PISA and UNESCO/TERCE documents show how IOs’ doctrines about the value of education, based on either Human Capital Theory or Human Rights, shape the design of the ILSAs they support. Second, quantitative analyses for four Latin American countries show that differently designed ILSAs disagree on the effectiveness of a specific policy, namely, grade retention: PISA’s achievement gap between repeaters and nonrepeaters doubles TERCE’s. This matters and warrants further research: divergent empirical results could potentially incentivize different education policies, reinforce IOs’ initial policy biases and provide perverse incentives for countries to modulate retention rates or join an ILSA on spurious motivations. In summary, ILSA designs, shaped by IOs’ educational doctrines, yield different data, potentially inspiring divergent global policy directives and national decisions.

National large-scale assessments (NLSA) have spread rapidly since the 1990s, but contrary to arguments of diffusion theories, not every country with large-scale assessments develop test-based accountability (TBA). The diverse-case comparison presented in this article demonstrates that the interaction between global pressures and domestic policy legacies produces a variety of uses of standardized tests. Foreign training of experts and a strong assessment tradition made TBA flourish in Chile when supporters could avoid the consequences of accountability and opposition was weak. Despite similar assessment traditions, Colombia developed soft accountability because of the lack of incentives to redistribute education responsibilities, and strong teacher opposition. Argentina rejected accountability because testing had limited legitimacy, governments avoided responsibility for results, and teachers opposed TBA. Findings suggest two lessons: testing expansion does not indicate convergence toward TBA, and we need further exploration of the feasibility and effects of alternative uses of NLSA to promote quality.

This study estimates the effects of economic activity on the quality of education in various regions of Colombia. To estimate this effect, we first calculate an index of quality of education. Second, we use a spatial regression model to estimate the effect of the spatial heterogeneity of the regions on this index of quality. Third, we use a dynamic data panel methodology and instrumental variables to estimate a causal relationship, where electricity consumption data and light intensity from satellite images are used to measure the economic activity. The principal results show that economic activity has a positive effect on the quality of education and the effects are persistent over time. However, the effects of the previous quality of education on current quality disappear over time. Therefore, the quality of education does not reproduce endogenously in time. These findings have practical implications for research on education and for comparative education.

The relationship between aspirations and educational outcomes has been underexplored in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on six waves of panel data from the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study, I use discrete time models to examine the relationship between aspirations for both education and marriage, and school dropout in Southern Malawi. Results show that, net of sociostructural constraints and students’ own educational experiences, girls who want to marry later are less likely to drop out of school during the study period. In addition, competing risk models show that girls who want to marry later are less likely to experience marriage-related dropout. Although there is some evidence that educational aspirations are associated with school dropout, this relationship weakens when marriage aspirations are held constant, particularly for girls. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering both educational and marital aspirations as pathways relevant to girls’ (but not boys’) educational outcomes.

This article examines intersections between schooling, child marriage, and adolescent pregnancy in a longitudinal, mixed-methods study of Honduran girls. It explores (a) girls’ enrollment and dropout of school patterns and how these relate to timing of marriage and/or childbirth, (b) the factors associated with dropout, early marriage, and/or early childbearing, and (c) reenrollment patterns after marriage/childbirth. We find that household income in early adolescence predicts school dropout, early union, and early childbearing. Most girls discontinued their studies due to lack of financial resources or no longer wanting to be a student rather than due to marriage or motherhood. Only a small percentage return to school. This study can inform the timing and nature of efforts to protect girls and increase their chances of successfully completing secondary school, delaying marriage, and preventing early pregnancy.

Drawing on original data on father involvement from a study of 1,684 respondents in 10 Middle Eastern countries, this article explores the intersection of father involvement with gender, geography (Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] vs. non-GCC), and generations, with educational attainment. To examine these relationships, we conducted a series of ANOVAs and regressions, supplemented with qualitative interview data. Overall, we find that fathers are perceived to be more encouraging of their daughters’ education than their sons’, that fathers from the GCC are perceived as less involved in their children’s education, and that younger fathers are perceived to be more involved in their children’s education than older ones. We also find that children who perceived their fathers as encouraging and good providers are associated with higher educational attainment. However, this article underscores the need for further research on the nature and impact of father involvement on education in the Middle East.