In the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment, students from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taipei, where the classroom disciplinary climate of schools was relatively strict, were top performers in mathematics. In this study, two-level linear analyses showed that the classroom disciplinary climate of schools significantly affected…

This article documents the methodological thinking that underpined a sociological study of "Teach for Bangladesh" ("TFB"), a globally mobile yet locally embedded education policy situated in a developing world context. In order to reassess education policy vis-à-vis spatialities-power, relationships-resources, culture-change…

This study addresses the lack of studies of diversity in post-Soviet higher education systems. It aims to examine institutional diversity in two post-Soviet countries as the result of higher state and market forces in the context of high-participation systems of higher education. The 'enrollment economy' has become the most powerful signal for…

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms in Europe and beyond have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between diversified types of schools. Despite this general trend, Finland continues to emphasise the municipal assignment of school…

The purpose of this paper is to advance the concept of narrative approaches to career counselling from a cross-cultural perspective by investigating the case of Vietnam. It offers an account of the sociocultural context of Vietnam as it shifts from its traditional Confucian and communist values to a modern globally integrated market economy.…

This paper examines the ecology of Slovene in the twentieth century by focusing on two key emergent themes. It focuses firstly on monolingualism as a key goal for Slovene language planners, starting with their efforts to create a standard language with no German influences in the nineteenth century, and continuing in their work to prevent…

From an opportunity to explore Cuba in a people-to-people exchange that included study of its history and society; discussions with members of the Cuban community, artists, guides, and a professor; and personal experiences while traveling, this viewpoint offers insights into the sociopolitical culture and creative engagement within which the Cuban…

The papers in this special issue on the spaces of pedagogy speak to the failures of neoliberal thinking when applied to education. Their pedagogical critique of neoliberalism contributes to a considerable body of work focused on challenging the driving discourses of education (or more accurately, school) systems. The source of the tensions between…

Best known for arguing that individual development is part of social and historical development Vygotsky's entry into education may be captured by his concept of the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD). ZPD has not yet been synthesized with a critical study of whiteness. When ZPD is used to explain racial disparities in the service of…

This paper uses the global trade negotiations and agreements, which include education sectors as potentially tradable services, to show the complex processes at work in making global education markets. Drawing on the work of Jens Beckert and others, I focus on the micro-processes of making capitalist orders and the challenges at hand in bringing…

This paper analyzes the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for education, which sets benchmarks for member states to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong opportunities for all" by the year 2030. I examine ways in which the underlying philosophical rationale for the targets invokes a…

To date research and scholarship on privatisation in education lacks critical depth and intensity. Many accounts have been largely descriptive, focusing on how privatisation takes places, or on the threat of privatisation, or its insertion within education systems. Furthermore, work on educational commodification has been substantially dissociated…

Our scope is to show how democracy has been trivialized as a concept and, more worryingly, as a mystified practice of consented servitude, which supposedly would bring to its very end. In fact, for the emblematic occidental societies, democracy has, at the best, been reduced to a consumerist way of life, under the capitalist liberal order, and the…

This paper examines United States-Indonesian cooperation in the training of Indonesian teachers during the early decades of the Cold War. Indonesia badly needed teachers but the government's efforts to train new teachers were hampered by the tremendous lack of teachers who could train new teachers. The aid provided by the United States enabled the…

Taking a lead from recent articles in "The History Teacher," the author placed history, popular culture, and historical literacy at the core of a history course entitled "Enchanted Capitalism: Myths, Monsters, and Markets." Drawing on folklore, literature, popular culture, and economics, the course explored the rise of…