World Education Patterns in the Global North: The Ebb of Global Forces and the Flow of Contextual Imperatives: Volume 43A

This opening chapter sets a frame for the chapters of this volume, dealing with how the dynamic dialectic interplay between forceful global societal forces and context shape humanity’s education response in various parts of the world. “Context” as a perennial threshold concept in Comparative and International Education is explicated. It will then be explained how, during its long historical evolution, scholars in the field each time had to contend new contexts, or reconceived the notion of “context” in a new way. Subsequently the problems of an overly fixation on the historical and the present, to the detriment of the future, and inertia are extant in the field, will be explained. The unprecedented, seismic changes currently impacting on the societal context worldwide, will then be enumerated. These changes can be subsumed under the collective name of globalization. The concept globalization is then clarified, and the take of the scholarly community on the impact of globalization on education is then mapped and interrogated. The authors’ stance on this is stated, namely that a dynamic interplay between global focus and contextual realities shape education in various parts of the world. It is in this theoretical frame that the remainder of the chapters of the volume is presented, combing out the main features of education development in each part of the world, as a dialectic between global forces and contextual imperatives.

The aim of this chapter is to survey present globally present societal trends in the era of globalization, which are creating a new context for education and for the field of Comparative and International Education. The trends include the ecological crisis, the population explosion and demographic dynamics, increasing mobility, the technological revolution, especially the ICT revolution, growing affluence, the neo-liberal economic revolution, the rise of a knowledge society, the fourth industrial revolution, changing social relations, democratization, the demise of the once omnipotent nation-state, the persistent but new presence of religion, and the rise of the Creed of Human Rights. These powerful, interrelated set of societal changes, which are getting spread worldwide on the wings of globalization, is creating a new world, of (in Comparative Education nomenclature) an unprecedented new context, forcing the scholars in the field to tread unknown territory. These forces depicted in this chapter constitute a framework for subsequent chapters in the book, where the response of humanity in the education sector, to meet the challenges these forces constitute, will be the theme.

This chapter will now focus on humanity’s response to the seismic contextual changes brought about by globalization at the cusp of the twenty-first century. The signature feature of this response is an enrollment explosion. Other features are four driving policyscapes (that aligned to capabilities theory, neo-liberal economics, the Creed of Human Rights, and social justice), education for sustainable development, managerialism, decentralization, Global, Citizenship Education, Multicultural and Intercultural education, Multilingualism and the rising importance of English as international lingua franca, Human Rights Education, from STEM to STEAM education and a reappreciation of the social sciences and the humanities, the divergent calls for relevance, new ways of production and packaging of knowledge, a shift from teaching to learning, new learning theories, and the rise of international testing regimes. In many ways, these responses are incomplete and still searching for the perfect fit in each context. It is in this regard where the value of Comparative and International Education comes to the fore.

North America is both geographically large and demographically diverse, which makes a discussion about globalization in North America difficult to distinguish from globalization writ large. This chapter attempts to do so nonetheless by examining tangible, virtual, and envisioned versions of the globalization of education in North America specific to trends in immigration (and migration), identity, and imagination. A brief explanation of theories of globalization that intersect in the North American context includes world systems, neo-institutionalism, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, and post-colonialism, but could include many more. This chapter also suggests that the globalization of education in North America is not limited to the continent of North America due to the many external or global educational entanglements that North Americans have with other countries and regions worldwide.

This chapter shows, from a comprehensive and dynamic approach, a unitary idea of Europe that shatters the fragmentation and reification of the old continent that is being politically projected. The research, based on a brief overview of the geopolitical and territorial diversity of the Western European countries, recovers the cartographic representation of Europe made by Sebastian Münster in 1544. It aims to represent a renewed area that has strengthened its international presence, based on the legitimization of divergent trajectories explained through interactive logics.

The political agenda for socio-educational issues portrays the contextual diversity that rules the governance of the Western European education systems. At the same time, it shows unification regarding inclusive institutional paradigms where the most significant achievements are accomplished within the European strategic framework. The research allows us to move on from the nationalist–post-nationalist option. Part of the European scene from which present and future lines of joint action are extracted in relation to sustainability, economic digitization and/or reformulation of the social system model.

This chapter offers a survey of education development in the Baltic region and the dynamics of global forces in the three Baltic states’ contexts. First, a brief overview of the incoming new-liberal global trend that impacted the education in the Post-Socialist European region will be provided, followed by a discussion of similarities and differences in the development of education in Baltic states as co-shaped by contextual contours of the post-socialist region at whole. It shows that the contextual social and cultural realities of Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania not only have a powerful mediating role on the impact of global forces but are in their own right an agency in shaping the education response of Post-socialist societies of this region. Second, the knowledge of the interrelationship between education and societal cultural contexts in the Baltic region will be explained, stressing the lack of research on informal settlements or the informal economy and its intersection with education. The International Comparative Education research agenda will not only be of significance for the Baltic states but to the entire world. Many aspects of the contextual architecture of the region are becoming increasingly evident world-wide tending the neo-liberalism in education as distinct from liberalism insofar as it does not advocate market-economic policy but instead is highly constructivist and approve a strong state to bring reforms in every aspect of society transforming the education and teaching labor market.

The aim of our research is to examine network of support persons of the students from marginalized Roma communities in Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovak Republic. By conducting a qualitative analysis of the examples of good practice, that is, students who have managed to successfully study at a university despite their difficult family backgrounds, we have surveyed the type of support the students received during their studies and the persons who supported them at individual education levels. In the research part, we also analyze the factors which had an impact on the development of their resilient personality and the sources of support which helped them overcome barriers during their studies. The primary support persons were the members of their nuclear families whose emotional, informational, instrumental, and appraisal support was particularly crucial at the primary school. At the next education levels, especially important for respondents was the emotional support they received in the form of encouragement and improvement of respondents’ self-confidence. Teachers are mentioned in the narratives of our respondents as persons engaging in their support and education at the primary and the secondary school. Their supportive influence fades away at the university, which is a pity for our group of students because it is the university environment which is completely unknown to them and so they must rely on the help of peers. A good strategy applied particularly in Hungary is the creation of support groups led by a lecturer-mentor for students coming from marginalized Roma communities which help them during the first days at university. School achievements of respondents were also influenced by other persons who helped them at all levels based on personal sympathies and the established relationships. At the beginning, such persons occur in their life narratives incidentally, but later respondents learned to actively build networks of support relationships as part of their resilient behavior.

This chapter aims to present the development of education in the South-East European (SEE) countries, which took place under strong influence of the European Union (EU) education policy. This is examined irrespective of the different relationships these countries have with the EU. Some of these are Member States, and others are candidate or partner countries. The chapter opens with the explanation of the concept of SEE, and it is processed with a discussion on the concept of Europeanization in the education field. The concept refers to the process of forming a common education policy in the EU. This is also transferred to non-EU European countries. The third subchapter synthetizes and evaluates the main characteristics and challenges of the education in the SEE countries from the perspective of common European policy goals.

Despite children’s academic excellence in East Asian countries, school education in this region faces a range of challenges to build inclusive and quality education for all. This chapter aims at examining how these challenges occur and what actions have been taken to deal with them. By focusing on China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, the chapter first reviews reforms of school education since the 1990s in these countries. The subsequent sections then present educational disparity and a new mode of teaching and learning in these countries. It concludes by addressing that East Asian countries must explore more common ground for building a more collective sense and identity to share responsibility for building a resilient, inclusive and sustainable world through global citizenship education and education for sustainable development.

Based on a description of the national features of the Israeli society and educational system, this chapter will briefly describe various attempts conducted since the 1970s to decentralize the Israeli educational system and promote school autonomy. It will focus specifically, on the School-Based Management (SBM) policy, borrowed by educational policymakers and implemented in the Israeli educational system during late 1990s. The decision to borrow this policy did not follow policymakers’ recognition in the limitations and shortcomings of the centralized structure of control, which characterized the educational system since Israel became an independent state in 1948. Rather, it followed pressures coming from various stakeholders who considered centralized policy plans irrelevant and not enough sensitive to the variety of local circumstances and needs (David, 1989; Hanson, 1984; Nir, 2002; Nir et al., 2016). Therefore, more than 20 years later, it appears that the implementation of SBM created limited effects in terms of teachers and school leaders’ degrees of freedom and that the educational system still maintains its centralized structure and features. The main argument the present chapter will attempt to make is that borrowed policies have a limited capacity to promote significant change in the borrowing system when policymakers do not fully believe in the policy’s values and ideas and are reluctant to abandon current patterns of organizational behavior. Specifically, it will describe the process that characterized the borrowing and implementation of the SBM policy in the Israeli educational system and will discuss the main symptoms that characterized the policy borrowing process when policymakers were not fully committed to the values and mode of operation brought by the borrowed policy.