About the Authors

Emily Anderson is a PhD candidate in Educational Theory and Policy and Comparative and International Education at The Pennsylvania State University, and Assistant Professor of Education (on leave) at Centenary College. She holds degrees in History with Secondary Social Studies certification (BA, Centenary College), Educational Leadership (MEd, Lehigh University) and Comparative and International Education (MA, Lehigh University). Her current research investigates education for women and girls’ empowerment and the role of social media in international education policy discourse.

Laban P. Ayiro, PhD, is a Professor of Educational Research Methods at Moi University in Kenya. He is also the Director of Quality Assurance at the same University. Prof. Ayiro holds a PhD and an MSc in Entrepreneurship Development from Kenyatta University, Kenya; MA in International Relations from the United States International University, Africa; an MEd in Economics and Planning from the University of Witwatersrand; and a BEd in the Teaching of Chemistry from McGill University, Canada. His primary area of research has been focused on Education Leadership & Management, Integration of ICT in Pedagogy and Research Methodology/Statistics. In his professional career, he has served as a High School Teacher, Principal, Provincial Director of Education, and a Senior Deputy Director in charge of Policy and Planning in the Ministry of Education in the Republic of Kenya. He also served as a Senior Deputy Director at the National Curriculum Development Centre in Kenya. Prof. Ayiro is a Senior Fulbright Scholar having been at Texas A&M in the United States researching and teaching in the area of educational research methodology.

Supriya Baily, PhD, is an Associate Professor at George Mason University teaching international and comparative education and qualitative research methods. Her research interests focus on gender, education, and empowerment as well as higher education in India. Working primarily in India and Indonesia, Supriya has spent time in rural regions of these countries to better understand how women and the people around them understand the changing nature of women’s power and identity. She also studies the role of internationalization in teacher education and policy issues affecting secondary and higher education in emerging countries. She is the co-editor of two books, Internationalizing Teacher Education in the US (2012) and the forthcoming Educating Adolescent Girls Around the Globe: Challenges and Opportunities from Routledge Research. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences. She served a three-year term as the Co-Chair of the Gender and Education Committee of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES).

Karen L. Biraimah, PhD, is a tenured Professor of Comparative Education and Director of International and Special Programs at the University of Central Florida. She has also served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, and the Faculty of Education at the University of Namibia. Prior to these experiences, Dr. Biraimah served as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Ghana, and as a member of the Faculty of Education at the University of Ife, Nigeria. She is Past-President of the Comparative and International Education Society and currently serves as the Chair of the Special Projects Standing Committee of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. Her research interests focus on issues of educational equity based on factors of race, ethnicity, class, and gender within the context of comparative and international education.

Keene Boikhutso, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Languages and Social Sciences Education at the University of Botswana. He holds a PhD in Political Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Boikhutso previously taught in various junior and senior secondary schools and a college of education in Botswana. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and supervises research at undergraduate and graduate level. Dr. Boikhutso has authored and co-authored a series of articles published in refereed journals and two book chapters on social studies education and globalization and public sector reforms. His research interests include ethnicity and ethnic identity, nation building, curriculum issues, teaching and learning and citizenship education.

Meagan Call-Cummings is a Doctoral Candidate in Education Policy and Inquiry Methodology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her multimodal dissertation, Exploring the Intersections and Implications of Pedagogies of Empowerment and Critical PAR through Youth Research on Racism in Schools, has been funded by the John H. Edwards Fellowship and the Indiana University Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity Studies and is based on a long-term participatory action research project conducted with a group of Latino/a high school students and their teacher in rural Idaho. Overall, Call-Cummings’ research centers on questions that push the fields of education policy and methodology toward more nuanced conceptualizations of ethics, validity, participation, and power. Call-Cummings seeks through her research to collaboratively catalyze social change, uncover and break down often hidden structures of inequity and injustice, and build peace, justice, and empowerment both locally and globally.

Petrina Davidson is a PhD student in Comparative and International Education at Lehigh University. She has an M.S. in Teaching, Learning, and Leadership with an emphasis on Curriculum and Instruction from Oklahoma State University, and her undergraduate degree is in English and Education. Prior to moving to Pennsylvania, she worked for one of the largest school districts in Oklahoma, where she taught high school English for three years and served as the district’s secondary English curriculum coordinator for one year. She currently serves as an Editorial Assistant for the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education. Her current research interests include the institutionalization of education, curriculum in post-conflict societies, and measures of teacher quality.

Brian D. Denman, PhD, currently serves as the Secretary-General of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), an international organization consisting of over 40 comparative and international education societies worldwide. His particular areas of expertise include the study of educational systems, educational planning and policy studies, international higher education policy, and comparative education research. At UNE’s School of Education, Dr. Denman serves as Course Coordinator for Training and Development and teach within the Contextual Studies in Education group. Since joining UNE in 2003, he has served as Visiting Professor at Minzu University of China (2012, 2014), Hiroshima University (2011), IIEP UNESCO Fellow (2008), Executive Council member of the World Council on Comparative Education Societies (2004–2011), Editor-in-Chief of the International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives (2007–2011), and President of the Australian and New Zealand Comparative and International Education Society (2006–2009). He has previously worked for a US university in an overseas branch campus based in China as a faculty director, served as a director of international development, and worked in various positions in study abroad.

Sothy Eng, PhD, is Professor of Practice of Comparative and International Education in the College of Education at Lehigh University. Dr. Eng’s research focuses on the role of family and sociocultural contexts in human development with social capital as a theoretical lens.

Ahmed Ismail Heggi, PhD, is Professor of Comparative Education and Educational Administration and was the dean of the faculty of education, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt. He has written widely on issues in comparative education, with a focus on education in Egypt, Arab, and foreign countries and on educational policy analyses and borrowing. He serves as Chair of the Egyptian society of comparative education and educational administration. He has been for 10 years Editor-in-Chief of the EGSCEEA Review of Education and serves on the editorial boards of various Egyptian educational journals. He used to be the Director of Faculties of Education Enhancement Project (FOEP) (2004–2007). He studied the systems of Primary School Teacher Training in UK (The College of St Paul and St Mary Sep 1980–March 1981, Cheltenham, England) and Educational Policy Analysis and Educational Planning, Models and Micro Computer based Methods (Harvard University, USA, 1–30 March, 1988). He is educational expert at UNESCO, UNICEF UNDP, ALECSO, and ISESCO.

Dobrochna Hildebrandt-Wypych, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Educational Studies of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her principle research interests are in comparative education and sociology of education, with a particular focus on political determinants of education in Central and East European societies. She is the author of a monograph, Unification of Germany and Compulsory Education in the New Federal States (Poznań, 2006). She is also the co-author and co-editor of the comparative education handbook, The Education Systems in the European Countries (Kraków, 2013). Her current key area of interest relates to selected issues in the sociology of youth (including social and political participation, social change and the formation of youth citizenship). She is the co-author and co-editor of Young People and Life Success: A Comparative Education Study on Young People in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands (Kraków, 2010).

Agreement Lathi Jotia, PhD, is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Social Sciences Education at the University of Botswana and an Honorary Professor at the University of Kwazulu Natal, Durban, South Africa. He received his PhD in Educational Studies (Cultural Studies in Education focusing on democracy and education) from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA. He has taught in Botswana and the United States. He is a researcher who conducts comparative research on education and has published widely in the area of Democracy and Education. His research interests are also on multiculturalism, deep democratic theory, transformative culturally responsive pedagogy, education and globalization and politics of developing areas.

Hans-Georg Kotthoff, PhD, is Professor of School Pedagogy and Comparative Education at the University of Education Freiburg, Germany. Prior to this, he was a Lecturer at the University of Münster, where he also took his PhD. His research interests include comparative analyses of European education systems, European educational policy, educational governance, school evaluation, and teacher education. He has coordinated the Socrates/Erasmus Network on Comparative Education between 2001 and 2003 and is currently President of the Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE).

Allyson Krupar holds a Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University and a Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing on conflict resolution, human rights law, and anthropology from American University. Currently, Ally is pursuing a dual-title PhD in Adult Education and Comparative International Education with specific research interests on conflict-affected populations and immigration. She has taught at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul and worked in distance and e-learning at Makerere University’s Infectious Disease Institute in Kampala, Uganda, and American University in Washington, DC. Her research focuses on adult and youth education in conflict-affected environments where formal education is unreliable or inaccessible, as well as human rights, peace education, and the role of technology in education in these settings.

Caroline Manion, PhD, is an Lecturer in the Comparative, International and Development Education (CIDE) collaborative program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. With over 15 years of research and teaching experience in the broad area of gender and education, Caroline has examined the construction of gender equality in education knowledge, the scope and nature of gender-based inequalities in education, their connections with social, economic, and political processes, and a variety of policy responses in North American and African school systems. Caroline currently serves as Co-Chair of the Comparative and International Education Society’s Gender and Education Committee as well as the CIDE representative for the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative Global Advisory Committee. Her research interests include gender and education, social justice and equity, civil society, global governance and educational multilateralism, and the politics of education.

Anselmo R. Paolone, PhD, attended the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where he defended a mémoire de D.E.A., in Anthropology, and was a member of the C.N.R.S. équipe E.R.A.S.M.E. This was followed by a History PhD at the European University Institute in Florence, defended successfully, on the birth of school ethnography in Britain. He has been Visiting Global Fellow at New York University in 1999–2000 and Visiting Researcher at the London School of Economics in 2001. He has lectured at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and is currently a tenured researcher at the University of Udine. He is member of the Executive Committee of CESE and secretary treasurer of the Italian Comparative Education Association (SICESE). His recent books include Educazione comparata e etnografia, tra globalizzazione e postmodernità (Roma, Monolite, 2009), Education Between Boundaries (Padova, Imprimitur, 2010), and Osservare l’educazione. L’etnografia dell’educazione di derivazione antropologico-sociale (Pisa, ETS, 2012).

Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, PhD, is Professor of International and Comparative Education at the Institute of Education at the University of Münster, Germany. Parreira do Amaral is member of the Board of Directors of the Section Intercultural and International Comparative Education Research (SIIVE) of the German Society for Education Research (DGfE) and member of the European network of NESET – Networks of Experts on the Social Aspects of Education. His current research focuses on international educational governance; international comparative research on educational policy at European and global level; theoretical and methodological implications of “globalization” and “internationalization” for CIE, as well as questions about transition from school to work in international perspective.

Esther Prins, PhD, coordinated an adult education program and taught ESL classes to Latino/a immigrants in Chicago after receiving her BA in Sociology from Wheaton College (Illinois). Her academic work has taken place in educational and community settings in the United States (Pennsylvania, New York, California, Washington), Central America (El Salvador, Belize), Ireland, and Africa (Ghana, Tanzania). These venues have included adult and family literacy programs, a union- and university-sponsored adult education program for Cornell employees, after-school programs, school-based community development projects, community-university partnerships, computer classes for children and adults at a migrant housing center, ecumenical community development and organizing coalitions, Cooperative Extension (Cornell, UC-Davis, and Washington State University), and informal science education for rural adults. Esther’s research interests include critical and sociocultural perspectives of adult and family literacy; gender; rural adult education; and participatory approaches to education, community development, and research. In particular, her scholarship examines the social and cultural dimensions of education, especially concerning how adult education reproduces or mitigates gender, racial, class, and cultural inequalities. She has also brought adult education expertise to two National Science Foundation projects involving adults and science: Marcellus EASE (Educating Adults about Science and Energy) and ALCCAR (Anticipatory Learning for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience).

Stephanie A. Sell, M.Phil., recently graduated with her degree in Comparative and International Education from the University of Oslo and currently works with Keystone Academic Solutions as a Marketing and Communications Manager. Her professional and research interests lie primarily in the areas of international student exchange and recruiting, as well as in studying the field of CIE as a whole. In particular, she is concerned with understanding the nature of the field’s history, its purpose, and in philosophical discussions regarding its future.

Payal Shah, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations & Qualitative Inquiry in the Department of Educational Studies, College of Education at the University of South Carolina. She completed her PhD in Education Policy Studies – International and Comparative Education from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her primary research interests include girls’ education; international development and education policy; and qualitative research methodology, with geographical expertise in South Asia. Payal’s primary research strands include investigating the schooling-empowerment link for adolescent girls in Western and Northern India; educational system-wide reform efforts in Northern India; and reconceptualizing global and international education for US students. Payal has published in a variety of journals across the fields of qualitative methodology, gender studies, and international and comparative education. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright Program, Spencer Foundation, Indiana University, and the University of South Carolina. She teaches courses in qualitative research methodology and international and comparative education.

Lynette Shultz, PhD, is Associate Dean of International Education and Director of the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research at the University of Alberta. She is also the President of the Comparative and International Education Society of Canada (CIESC). She has published widely in the areas of global social justice, citizenship, and internationalization of education.

Whitney Szmodis is a PhD candidate in Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her area of research focuses on the gender disparity in STEM education, specifically in marginalized communities. Her research delves into education systems and underlying gender bias in the curriculum and delivery of instruction, as well as the role of sociocultural factors within families and local communities that play an intrinsic role in both girls’ aspirations, as well as their ability, to explore future careers in STEM fields.

Calley Stevens Taylor is a PhD student in Comparative and International Education at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the Director of Student Success and Retention at Cedar Crest College, a private women’s college in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Her areas of professional expertise include academic advising, retention programing, student support services, and higher education academic administration. She also serves as an editorial assistant for the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education. Her current research interests include education equity, the institutionalization of education, quality assurance in higher education, and higher education and globalization.

Derrick Tu is a Doctoral Candidate in the Faculty of Education at York University, Canada. His past research examined physical education teacher candidates’ attitudes toward social inclusion in Toronto through poetry, memoir, and creative non-fiction. His current research interests include higher education, research methods, arts education, and comparative and international education.

Eliška Walterová, PhD, is a professor of Education in the Institute for Research and Development of Education at Faculty of Education, Charles University in Prague. Her research and teaching concern comparative education, schooling, educational policy, and European studies. She participates in numerous international projects and represents the Czech Comparative Education Section in the WCCES. Selected book titles: Curriculum: Changes and Trends in the International Perspective; Comparative Education: Development and Changes in the Global Context; Education-A(non) Public Affair?; Two Worlds of Basic School: The Pitfall of the Transition from Primary to Secondary Level; Schooling in the Russian Federation (with others).

Alexander W. Wiseman, PhD, is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education in the College of Education at Lehigh University. Dr. Wiseman holds a dual-degree PhD in Comparative & International Education and Educational Theory & Policy from Pennsylvania State University, an MA in International Comparative Education from Stanford University, an MA in Education (and Teacher Certification) from The University of Tulsa, and a BA in Letters from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Wiseman conducts internationally comparative educational research using large-scale education datasets in math and science education, information and communication technology (ICT), teacher preparation, professional development and curriculum as well as school principal’s instructional leadership activity, and is the author of many research-to-practice articles and books. He serves as Series Editor for the International Perspectives on Education and Society volume series (Emerald Publishing), and has recently published in the journals Compare: A Journal of International and Comparative Education, Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, Research in Comparative and International Education, Journal of Supranational Policies of Education, and Computers & Education.

Qiang Zha, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Faculty of Education, York University, Canada. He holds a PhD (Higher Education) from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto and a MA (Comparative Education) from the Institute of Education, University of London. His research interests include Chinese and East Asian higher education, international academic relations, global brain circulation, internationalization of higher education, globalization and education, differentiation and diversity in higher education, theories of organizational change, knowledge transfer and commercialization, and international migration and development. He has written and published widely on these topics. In 2004, he was a co-recipient of the inaugural IAU/Palgrave Prize on Higher Education Policy Research. His most recent books include a co-authored book (with Ruth Hayhoe et al.) Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities: In the Move to Mass Higher Education (Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong Kong and Springer, 2011), and two edited volumes Education and Global Cultural Dialogue (co-edited with Karen Mundy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Education in China. Educational History, Models, and Initiatives (Berkshire Publishing, 2013). He is currently working on a new book titled Massification and Diversification of Higher Education in China: An Exploration of State, Market and Institutional Forces, which is to be published by Routledge.