Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2022: Volume 46A

After a decade of comparative and international education research, evaluation, reflection, and introspection, there still may not be a clear answer to the question: What difference does an annual review of comparative and international education make? Bereday’s questions regarding the field from the 1960s largely remain unanswered and what answers there are remain relatively unchanged from the initial review of the field in 2013. In this reflective piece, the editor of the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education provides a retrospective look at what the Annual Review of the field has produced as well as what has not been accomplished over the first 10 years of the Annual Review’s publication. Key points are that (1) comparative and international education continues to be an affiliation-oriented rather than independent, well defined field of study and practice; (2) annual reflection on the field is meaningful even when the field seems resistant to change; (3) comparative and international education scholars and professionals alike tend to under emphasize reflective scholarship and practice and over emphasize critique or critical commentary; (4) there is promise for the field related to unity, debate, clarification, understanding, and encouragement; (5) the field is persistently under-professionalized; (6) the state of the field is largely unchanged since the 1960s; and (7) the organization and content of the Annual Review itself – much like the field itself – is subject to reflection and change.

The Annual Review of Comparative and International Education (ARCIE) represents a forum and an opportunity for scholars worldwide to discuss and examine trends and directions in comparative/international education, highlighting relevant developments in these fields, related to educational contexts, climates, and reforms in these contexts. Changes and reforms within these contexts and areas can have significant impacts on various education stakeholders, agents, and societies. Given the need to identify and prepare for these changes, the objective of this chapter is to discuss recent trends and directions in the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE). The method employed to identify these trends was a meta-analysis of the 23 chapters published in the 2020 edition of ARCIE. The 23 chapters composed the corpus of texts analyzed in this study, with the support of an online platform for corpora processing. Results of the analysis were contrasted with relevant literature in the field and suggest that (among the three main missions of universities) teaching and research received more attention than outreach/services, considering the corpus analyzed. In addition, teachers and students received more attention than administrative staff. Therefore, we conclude that more attention is necessary toward these aspects (outreach and administrative staff) in the pursuit of social justice and UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Finally, the prevalence of topics related to language and sustainability suggests a need for more representativeness, in terms of regions and languages studied in the field of CIE.

The worldwide interdependency of nations has been acknowledged throughout the globalization literature and by many national and international organizations, including higher education institutions (HEIs), which have become an essential tool to accelerate this process. Financial, cultural, and political motives have driven 21st century higher education (HE) toward a more international direction shaping HE policies and promoting the mobility of ideas and individuals across the world. Utilizing bibliometric and descriptive tools, the article aims to analyze the existing knowledge base on international mobility of academics (IMA) as a core component of internationalization. More specifically, the study examines 423 papers published between 1970 and 2021 in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases to reveal the big picture of the knowledge base by identifying the volume, growth trajectory, geographical dispersion, the most influential authors, articles, journals as well as the intellectual structure and the topical foci in the field. The findings have produced four distinct schools of thought labeled as “Knowledge Transfer and Mobility Networks,” “Academic Mobility in IHE Process,” “Expatriate Studies,” and “Scientific Mobility.” Moreover, the co-occurrence keyword map has yielded several topical foci: “Internationalization and Expatriate Academics,” “Academic Mobility and Career Paths,” and “Knowledge Transfer, Migration, and Academic Identity.” Considering the general trends and developments in the field, the study might provide more insight into further research.

The Plan to Accept 300,000 International Students achieved its numerical target in 2019 in Japan. Although the Japanese government announced its successful attainment, there has been criticism that it increased bogus international students. This chapter aims to elucidate its outcomes and issues by examining its policy structure, key indicators, and the background causes of such criticism. The Plan was supposed to recruit excellent international students and promote their employment in Japan, pursuing an increase in highly skilled professionals, the objectives listed in the Growth Strategy of the Abe administration (2012–2020). As a result of the analysis, it was found that the efforts for internationalization of universities led to the increase in international students in English-taught degree programs (ETDP), especially at the graduate level. However, many of them found difficulty finding employment in Japan because of lack of the Japanese language proficiency required by Japanese companies. The main contributors in achieving the target of 300,000 international students were Japanese language schools. Since their student recruitment and educational activities have not been monitored enough by the government, it led to the increase of international students who were busy with part-time jobs and failed to proceed to universities, which undermined the Plan’s attainment.

The primary goal of university education globally is to promote research, knowledge, and innovations instrumental for national development and societal transformation. In line with this goal, East African countries, namely Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania have invested heavily in university education in the last 60 years since independence. The evidence of this is the increasing number of both private and public universities, and the number of students joining the institutions. While the expansion of university education is to be celebrated, it should not be taken for granted that this expansion indicates development. The purpose of this research was to assess the impact of university education on regional development in the three East African countries, that is, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Data were collected through historical analyses, database searches on electronic and printed sources, and interviews. The study found out that the three African countries have formulated the goals of education toward the achievement of development and that large budgets have been committed to educational expansion in the university in recent years. However, the impact of the universities in the development of the region expected through research and innovation is minimal because of major challenges that include expansion of access without adequate government funding; compromises quality; graduate unemployability and political interference; students’ unrest and strikes; weaknesses in earlier levels of education; regional, gender, and class inequalities; and misalignment of education, development, and contextual strengths. Proposed future strategies included the calls for governments to enhance regional consultations on development and education, the need for specialization in programs rather than duplication, enhancement of international collaborations and networking, rethinking the role of education in development within given contextual and environmental realities, and good governance and adequate funding of education.

This chapter presents empirical results of an analysis of the content of education reform globally in nine policy areas during the recent wave of neoliberal reforms between 1970 and 2018. It draws on data from the World Education Reform Database (WERD), the most comprehensive database to date of education reforms around the world. The results show a dramatic increase in policy reform discourse on improving educational quality compared to reforms in other policy areas between 1970 and 2018, with the pace accelerating from 1990 onwards. Expanding access to education remains an important priority. Access reform discourse slightly increases during the peak period of education reform from 1992 to 2009, before leveling off. The results also show a significant rise of reforms in policy areas related to accountability discourse. Overall, the descriptive trends presented in this chapter complement case study literature on neoliberal education reform and suggests directions further cross-national research.

In an ever-interconnected world dominated by discourses on the internationalization and marketization of higher education, concerns related to language and employability have been the focus of recent debates. There is, however, a dearth of research investigating how these dimensions relate to one another in recent comparative and international higher education research. By focusing on how issues related to language and employability have been presented in recent higher education research worldwide, this chapter aims to contribute to our understanding of this concern. To achieve this goal, we conducted a scoping literature review using the Web of Science, Scopus, and the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) databases, considering the years 2011–2020. The findings, perhaps not surprisingly, suggested that language skills are perceived to be valued by both graduates and employers though the discussions predominantly focused on one language, English. The research focus on English for employability in Anglophone contexts is understandable. However, the fact that the trend is observed in contexts where the language is not the primary or official language seems to indicate the influence of internationalization of higher education and global labor markets primarily dominated by English. The literature also suggested that (English) language training in higher education programs needs to move from solely linguistic and qualification-related content areas to a broader sphere of English for communication purposes that cover both specialized disciplinary content and broader generic employability skills. Considering this finding, we suggest that higher education systems and institutions incorporate recent developments in English for occupational purposes in their curriculum. We also recommend that there needs to be a shift from the overwhelmingly English language-dominated discussions to more inclusive research that assesses the impact of other dominant languages on employability-related concerns.

Scholarly literature on the Internationalization of Education has generated important theories, debates, and insights supporting in-depth understandings of the field, yet we lack comprehensive reviews exploring the design, implementation, and impact of practical approaches. The present review addresses this gap, mapping the literature on international curriculum design, identifying trends and themes across approaches and pedagogies while revealing limitations and lack of attention to issues that inhibit practice in the field. It highlights the privileging of “instrumental,” or quantifiable skills-based curricula, over “transformative” internationalization dedicated to social justice and equity, and observes important disconnects between theory and practice: publications in the field offer critical conceptualizations of what internationalized curricula should achieve and why but with little attention to specific content and teaching practice that would lead to achieving these objectives. The review further analyzes such disconnect in the literature dedicated to decolonial internationalizing pedagogies, while simultaneously illuminating how prevailing decolonial theories of international education erase and ignore parts of the world. It concludes by contending that approaches to the internationalization of curriculum would benefit from increased practical frameworks that could guide educators, practitioners, and students in crucial conversations at the intersections of social justice and International Education.

This chapter presents a survey of education development in Oceania, a region of diversity held together by its commonalities, shaped by the largest ocean on the planet. The chapter outlines the regional contexts of Oceania and offers a brief historical overview of formal education. Oceania, like most regions, has struggled to mediate between global agendas and national and regional aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination. The chapter recounts ongoing efforts to navigate education in the post-colonial period, efforts to negotiate some of the aspirations of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All (EFA), and other global agendas of the early 2000s with, more recently, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this survey, we hope to demonstrate collective efforts to respond to global agendas, to shape and strengthen regionalism, while maintaining sovereignty in a globalized world. We also highlight the evolving identities of the region, in particular the relationships between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific countries that collectively make up Oceania.

This chapter looks at the state of current research in comparative and international education, and argues that much research is focused on practical policy concerns and driven by funding or other rewards for publishing. Theoretical explorations have been moved from the agenda, partly by external forces, and partly by internal movements that militate against ambitious theory building and critical analysis of key concepts. With a focus on the meliorative purposes of comparative and international education, too much research says little more than could have been found with a little reflection. And this is especially true of research that seeks to illuminate the attitudes of one or another group of stakeholders in the educational process.

Comparative education research in Japan is strongly oriented toward emphasizing fieldwork, unlike Western methodologies that aim for theorization. For this reason, it is sometimes regarded as peripheral research without a theorizing orientation or as a counterstrategy to Western research. This study examines why Japanese comparative education research emphasizes fieldwork, focusing on discussions at the Japanese Society of Comparative Education from the 1990s to the present, and considers whether the discussion far from aimed at theorizing. It can be said that Japanese comparative educational research, while characterized by a field-oriented orientation, has been trying to analyze the subject with sincerity through more in-depth fieldwork and is aware of the back and forth between theorizing and differentiation. Furthermore, recently, an international, agenda-based approach and the concept of transboundary fieldwork based on triangulation and Border Studies as a new way of looking at the field itself have also emerged. Therefore, it can be said that Japanese comparative educational research, while characterized by a field-oriented orientation, is increasingly aiming for a multilayered and relative analysis of the field, which is an argument autonomously derived from a focus on the field rather than being a strategy or a challenge to Western universalization-oriented methodologies.

This study systematically maps the research trends in the domain of “shadow education” over the last 40 years using metadata extracted from the SCOPUS database. The results reveal that the outputs of shadow education research have grown exponentially within the last decade. Bray and his colleagues from the University of Hong Kong, East China Normal University, and the Education University of Hong Kong have been the most prolific and influential research team. They are followed by Park and Byun from the USA, who have mostly worked on East Asian contexts. The USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China, have been the main sources of contributions and the University of Hong Kong has been the leading university in this field. Educational studies, economics, psychology, linguistics, and sociology have been the main disciplines researched within shadow education. Shadow education studies have revealed how shadow education can be a major instrument for maintaining and exacerbating social inequalities. They have also largely focused on the tangible (quantifiable) benefits related to improving students’ examination results. This study’s results stress the importance of regulating the private tutoring market, suggesting areas for ongoing research.

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Moreover, scholars who engage in the trendy internationalization in higher education should move beyond the logics of neo-liberalism, and pay closer attention to the new geopolitical realities that are changing the normative and interactive dimensions of international higher education at large.