About the Authors

Bilyaminu Inuwa Bello is currently a Reading Specialist working with Creative Associates International for the Nigeria Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI+). He is responsible for leading teams in Bauchi and Sokoto states in the implementation of a large-scale Hausa reading improvement project. Mr. Bello’s interest in literacy began through his work in adult education and community development, and expanded through his work coordinating and supervising early grade reading assessment efforts in Bauchi state under the Nigeria Northern Education Initiative (NEI) from 2010–2014. As a Reading Program and Assessment Coordinator in Bauchi for the Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA), Mr. Bello contributed to the overall design and development of literacy materials, as well as supervised implementation of the reading approach in Bauchi state. He also supervised data collection in the state. In 2014, Mr. Bello led EGRA training and monitoring in Jigawa and Kano states. His current Ph.D. research work focuses on how to improve youth reading outcomes in Bauchi state.

Mary E. Brenner, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Brenner did her graduate work in Anthropology at UC Irvine. Her dissertation research looked at how the western type schools in Liberia incorporated and conflicted with the local culture in both teaching methods and mathematical topics. After completing her Ph.D., she worked at the Kamehameha Early Education Program in Hawaii and then at UC Berkeley. Since coming to UCSB in 1991, Dr. Brenner has been examining how schooling can be more effective for diverse groups of learners including English language learners, Native Alaskans, students in various Asian nations, immigrants, and Micronesian students, particularly in mathematics. She has also been working with several different after school programs to better understand how different kinds of learning environments can enhance student learning and adjustment.

Petrina M. Davidson is Ph.D. 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 and a research associate and teaching assistant in Lehigh’s CIE program. Her current research interests include the institutionalization of education, curriculum in post-conflict societies, and measures of teacher quality.

Lutine de Wal Pastoor, Ph.D. Educational Anthropology, is Senior Researcher in the Department of Children and Youth at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS) in Oslo, Norway. Her research is primarily aimed at the education of children and young people from refugee and minority backgrounds, with an emphasis on sociocultural and psychosocial conditions for an inclusive school environment. Previously, she conducted a research project on the resettlement of unaccompanied young refugees in Norway, with a particular focus on education. Furthermore, she initiated the Nordic Network for Research Cooperation on Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (NordURM). Currently, she participates as a coordinator/researcher in a Nordic research project: Coming of Age in Exile (CAGE) – Health and Socio-Economic Inequities in Young Refugees in the Nordic Welfare Societies (2015–2019).

Margaret M. Dubeck, Ph.D., is Senior Literacy Researcher for RTI International, based in Washington, DC. Her interest in literacy began examining dyslexic readers learning in multilingual contexts. Since then, she has experience in the entire research cycle including multi-disciplinary randomized controlled trials, funding, sensitization, piloting, implementation, evaluation, analysis, and dissemination. She examines assessments that are instructionally transparent and that inform evaluations. She has created, modified, and established the technical adequacy of literacy, math, attention, and affective instruments in multiple languages. Her literacy interventions, designed for schools, community programs, and individualized settings include teacher and student materials, trainings, supportive technology and measures of fidelity. She has taught in diverse educational settings: clinical, private, and public, from kindergarten through the graduate level. She teaches for the University of Virginia in the Reading@Curry program.

Christopher J. Frey is Associate Professor of Educational Foundations at Bowling Green State University, where he coordinates the MA in Cross-Cultural and International Education (MACIE) program. He began his professional career as a social studies teacher at a bilingual-bicultural high school on the Navajo Nation, and taught English in Japan. His research focuses on the comparative histories of Indigenous and minority schooling, cross-cultural teaching, and international education development aid.

Roxana Ghiaţău is Lecturer at the Pre-and In-Service Teacher Training Department from “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi, Romania. Her main research interests are professional ethics for teachers, axiology in education, and teacher evaluation. Her doctoral thesis was entitled “The Deontological Code of the Teaching Profession – Principles and Content.” She is the first author of “Interaction between summative and formative in higher education assessment: students’ perception” (Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 11, 2011) and “Exploring the students’ perceptions regarding unethical practices in the Romanian educational system” (International Journal of Educational Development, 44, 2015).

Amber Gove, Ph.D., is Director of Research within the International Education Division at RTI International, based in Washington, DC. In this role she leads the division strategy for increasing research production, working across program areas to publish and disseminate findings from RTI’s work. Her research and policy interests include improvement and measurement of student learning; education finance; conditional cash transfer programs; and factors affecting achievement, enrollment, and attendance. Dr. Gove also serves as RTI’s Assisting Basic Education: All Children Reading Project Director, a USAID program designed to support the agency in its goal of improving reading for 100M children. Dr. Gove has nearly two decades of experience in international education and regularly engages with client and ministry counterparts in policy dialogue around early learning and assessment. Her publications include a 2011 edited volume entitled The Early Grade Reading Assessment: Applications and Interventions to Improve Basic Literacy and Early Grade Reading: Igniting Education for All (also 2011). Dr. Gove received her Ph.D. in International Comparative Education and her MA in Economics from Stanford University.

Adrienne Henck, Ph.D., is the Director of Global Schools First at the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) in Washington, DC. Her research interests include educational access and quality, global citizenship education, children’s rights, child labor and out of school children. Adrienne holds a Ph.D. in Educational Theory and Policy, and Comparative and International Education (dual degree) from Penn State University, an MA in International Education from New York University, and a BS in Psychology from Mary Washington College. She has collaborated on projects with Save the Children in Washington, DC and Dhaka, Bangladesh; UNICEF in Odisha, India; and Backward Society Education (BASE), a community-based NGO in Tulsipur, Nepal.

Stephen P. Heyneman received his Ph.D. in comparative education from the University of Chicago in 1976. He served the World Bank for 22 years. Between 1976 and 1984 he helped research education quality and design policies to support educational effectiveness. Between 1984 and 1989 he was in charge of external training for senior officials worldwide in education policy. And between 1989 and 1998, he was responsible for education policy and lending strategy, first for the Middle East and North Africa and later for the 27 countries of Europe and Central Asia. In July 2000, he was appointed professor of International Education Policy at Vanderbilt University. In 2015 he became Professor Emeritus. Current interests include the effect of education on social cohesion and the economic and social cost to education corruption.

Maryam Kia-Keating, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology in the UCSB Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology and a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. She received her A.B. from Dartmouth College, Ed.M. from Harvard University in Risk and Prevention, and Ph.D. from Boston University in Clinical Psychology. Dr. Kia-Keating completed her predoctoral clinical internship and postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Kia-Keating’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health. She served on the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Psychosocial Effects of War on Children and Families who are Refugees from Armed Conflict Residing in the United States. She focuses her work around coping and resilience in the context of experiences of trauma, stress, and adversity, particularly for vulnerable and ethnic minority populations, and in order to best inform prevention and intervention efforts.

Glenda Kruss is Research Director in the Education and Skills Development research programme at the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa. Her research over the past 10 years has focused on higher education, innovation and development, exploring issues of responsiveness to economic and social needs; and skills development. She has led large-scale empirical research projects in global and national networks, as well as policy oriented research in South Africa. She currently leads a project on sectoral skills development systems as part of the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership between government and researchers.

Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela, Ph.D., is Vice-Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategy (VPIAGS) and Professor of Comparative and International Higher Education. Prior to joining the University of Illinois, she served as the Assistant Dean for International Studies in the College of Education and Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State University. Originally from South Africa, she pursued and graduated with a Master’s in Labor & Industrial Relations and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A former Fulbright New Century Scholar (2006), Prof. Mabokela’s research examines experiences of marginalized populations and aims to inform institutional policies that affect these groups within institutions of higher education. She is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of seven books and has published extensively in national and international journals including Comparative Education Review, American Educational Research Journal, the Africa Education Review, and The Review of Higher Education, Comparative Education, Higher Education, among others.

Jean A. Madsen, Ph.D. is Professor at Texas A&M University. She has worked on several qualitative projects that include the study of private schools and teachers of color in desegregated schools. Her research interests include studying workplace relationships and its effect on organizational outcomes. She recently received a grant from the Kellogg foundation to develop an inclusion model for schools with changing demographics. Dr. Madsen has over 25 peer refereed articles and 80 presentations at the American Educational Research Association and the University Council of Education Administration. Her articles were accepted in American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Comparative Education Review, Peabody Journal of Education, and Urban Education. She has written three books, with one being nominated for the Grawemeyer Award in Education. She also received two awards (George Bereday & Emerald Literati Network 2012 Awards) for Excellence Outstanding Papers.

Simon McGrath is Professor of International Education and Development at the University of Nottingham and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape. He is also chair of the UK Forum for International Education and Training, which convenes the UK constituency on international education. He writes mainly on the relationships between post-school education and training and different development theories. He is also heavily involved in policy advisory work for a number of national and international organisations.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss is Associate Professor of Education and Sociology at American University, where she also directs the International Training and Education Program and runs the bi-annual Global Education Forum. Her research follows two trajectories: nationalist and extremist expressions of youth culture in Germany, and the production and legitimization of knowledge about the world within US universities. She is the author of Blood and Culture: Youth, Right-Wing Extremism, and National Belonging in Contemporary Germany (Duke University Press, 2009) and Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge (co-edited with Seteney Shami, NYU Press, 2016), and is finishing two book manuscripts, on the production of knowledge about the “rest” of the world in U.S. universities and on the commercialization of far right youth subculture in Germany.

Naomi A. Moland is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at New York University and teaches in the International and Comparative Education department at Teachers College – Columbia University. Her work focuses on issues of multicultural education in comparative perspective. She has taught and researched in diverse educational settings in Arizona, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Spain, and Nigeria. She is currently writing a book on educational media (Sesame Street) as a form of American soft power in countries affected by terrorism (particularly Nigeria). Naomi is also conducting new research on the cultural dynamics of early childhood education initiatives, as well as a project about global LGBT rights discourses. She holds degrees in International Education (Ph.D., New York University), Curriculum and Instruction (M.Ed., Arizona State University), and Anthropology (B.A., Tufts University). Her research has been funded by the Fulbright Foundation and by a Boren Fellowship, and has been published in Comparative Education Review and Urban Education.

Moses W. Ngware, Ph.D., is Senior Researcher and leads the Education Research Program at the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). He joined APHRC in 2007; prior to that he was Policy Analyst at the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, and also served as Senior Lecturer and Chairman of Department at Egerton University, Kenya. He has been PI or Co-PI in more than 10 research projects in education. His current research work involves understanding what is happening inside the classroom, effectiveness of education interventions and, the efficiency of education systems. Ngware is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa; and leader of the Education Working Group under the INDEPTH network that has DSS sites in more than 20 sub-Saharan Africa countries. He has more than 70 publications including working papers, discussion papers, occasional reports, peer-reviewed articles, book and book chapters.

Bjorn H. Nordtveit, Ph.D. is Current Editor of the Comparative Education Review, and is serving as an Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has more than 10 years of experience with UNESCO and the World Bank, mostly from South-East Asia and West Africa. He received his Ph.D. in International Education Policy from the University of Maryland in 2005, after which he was employed as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. In this role, he continued his work on aid effectiveness and in particular public-private partnerships, and also conducted research on Sino-African cooperation in education. Bjorn Nordtveit’s more recent work focuses on education in adversity, and on child protection. His most recent book is Schools as Protection: Reinventing Education in Contexts of Adversity (Springer 2016).

Kata Orosz is Associate Research Fellow at the Yehuda Elkana Center for Higher Education at Central European University, Hungary. She holds a PhD in Higher Education from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in International Educational Development from Teachers College at Columbia University, and an MA in Public Policy from Central European University. Kata worked on a multi-year research and capacity building project on higher education internationalization that involved team members from the United States and the Republic of Kazakhstan and explored the characteristics and outcomes of government-funded international scholarship programs worldwide. Studies she co-authored were published in the International Journal of Educational Development, Educational Researcher, and Higher Education.

Laura W. Perna is James S. Riepe Professor and founding Executive Director of the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy (AHEAD) at the University of Pennsylvania. She is Immediate-Past President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) and past Vice President of the Postsecondary Division of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her research uses a range of methodological approaches to identify how social structures, educational practices, and public policies promote and limit college access and success, particularly for individuals from lower-income families and racial/ethnic minority groups. Recent books include The Attainment Agenda: State Policy Leadership for Higher Education (with Joni Finney, 2014, Johns Hopkins University Press).

Il-haam Petersen is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Education and Skills Development programme at the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa. Her research interests include science, technology and innovation capacity-building in sub-Saharan Africa; skills development; and new approaches to analysing the micro-foundations of innovation processes, especially mixed-methods social network analysis and a network-institutional approach to analysing inter-organisational networks.

Alison Pflepsen currently works at University Research Co., LLC, where she supports the Reading Within Reach (REACH) initiative and the Global Reading Network (GRN). Prior to this position, she was a Research Education Analyst for six years at RTI International. Ms. Pflepsen has more than 12 years of experience designing, implementing and managing education programs in sub-Saharan Africa. Her specific areas of expertise include reading assessment, literacy program implementation and evaluation, language-in-education issues, and issues of gender equity. For the past six years, Ms. Pflepsen has led early grade learning assessment work in multiple countries, as well as contributed to several resources and trained others in assessment implementation. From 2010–2016, she managed and provided technical contributions to early grade literacy activities in Northern Nigeria, including the USAID-supported Nigeria Northern Education Initiative (NEI) and the Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA). From 2014–2016, she served as a technical advisor and project manager for RARA, which included a randomized controlled trial of a literacy improvement initiative in Bauchi and Sokoto states currently being expanded through the Nigeria Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI+) and other programs. Ms. Pflepsen holds a M.S. in International Development Management, with a focus in education.

Simona Popa is Program Specialist at UNESCO International Bureau of Education, in Geneva. Since 2007, she has been the managing editor of Prospects, Comparative Journal of Curriculum, Learning and Assessment (formerly Quarterly Review of Comparative Education). She holds a Ph.D. in comparative education from the University of Pittsburgh and Master’s degrees in international development education and comparative literature.

Nitya Rao is Professor Gender and Development at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on two major strands: equity issues in educational experience and provisioning and its implications for livelihood choices and the construction of gendered subjectivities, and gendered changes in land and agrarian relations, migration and livelihoods and its impact on agency, identity and material well-being. Apart from several articles in international journals, she has edited two books in the field of education: Migration, Education and Socio-Economic Mobility published in 2012 by Routledge, Oxford, and Partnerships for Girls’ Education (co-edited with Ines Smyth) by Oxfam Publications, Oxford in 2005. She has served on the Global Advisory Committee of the UN Girls’ Education Initiative since 2006 and has been co-editor of Compare between 2010 and 2016.

Calley Stevens-Taylor is Ph.D. 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, PA. 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.

Rolf Straubhaar is Assistant Research Scientist and the Assistant Director for Research at the University of Georgia’s Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE). Trained as an anthropologist, his research focuses on reforms in teacher education in the United States, Brazil, and Mozambique. He also studies the role of race in shaping the predispositions of white educators working in communities of color throughout the world. His work has been published widely, notably in the Comparative Education Review, Education and Urban Society, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Critical Studies in Education, and the High School Journal.

David A. Turner is Professor of Education of the International and Comparative Education Research Centre of Beijing Normal University, where he teaches comparative education, and Professor Emeritus of the University of South Wales in the UK. His scholarly work in the field of education has been widely recognised, and he is a Fellow of the Academy for Social Science and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK. He has written many articles and books on aspects of education, especially relating to theoretical analysis of educational settings and recognition of the complexity of relationships at play in education. His publications include Theory of Education (Continuum: 2004), Theory and Practice of Education (Continuum: 2009), and Using the Medical Model in Education: Can pills make you clever?

R. Drake Warrick has more than 23 years of experience leading, designing, and managing international development projects throughout Africa and Asia. Through his work in the education sector he supports governments, the private sector and civil society in the formulation and implementation of education policy, as well as in the improvement or establishment of operational systems for education sector finance, monitoring, and evaluation (M&E), data utilization, personnel capacity building, and design of learning programs to improve student academic achievement. Mr. Warrick served as Senior Systems Strengthening Advisor under the Nigeria Northern Education Initiative (NEI) and was the Chief of Party for the Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA). In these roles, Mr. Warrick was responsible for supervision of EGRA implementation and other activities in the states.

Alexander W. Wiseman, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education in the College of Education at Lehigh University. Dr. Wiseman holds a dual-degree Ph.D. in Comparative & International Education and Educational Theory & Policy from Pennsylvania State University, a MA in International Comparative Education from Stanford University, a 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 on 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.

Elizabeth A. Worden is Associate Professor of International Education at American University. Her primary research examines the intersection of national identity, social memory, reconciliation, and education. She has published widely on the subject, including a recent book, National Identity and Educational Reform: Contested Classrooms (Routledge 2014). Her other research interests include civic and history education, democracy and education, and international exchange. Dr. Worden’s current research project is on teachers’ lives, social memory, and citizenship education in Northern Ireland, where she spent the fall of 2014 on a Fulbright fellowship. In addition to her primary research agenda, Dr. Worden has worked on the internationalization of higher education as part of a team of scholars housed at the Social Science Research Council.

Muhammad Bello Yusuf is an Education Program Specialist with in-depth experience conducting and managing all aspects of early grade reading assessments, and other data collection activities, in Northern Nigeria. From 2010 to 2014, Mr. Yusuf coordinated and supervised early grade learning assessment and household survey work conducted under the Nigeria Northern Education Initiative (NEI) in Sokoto state. In this capacity, he was responsible for organizing and supervising large-scale data collections. Under the Nigeria Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA), from 2014 to 2015, Mr. Yusuf served as a Reading Program and Assessment Coordinator. He was responsible for supervising EGRA implementation in Sokoto, Kaduna and Katsina states and contributed to the development of Early Grade Reading approach, materials and implementation. He also coordinated and managed the roll-out of teacher training and coach support on EGR in Sokoto state. Mr. Yusuf is currently the Reading Specialist with Education Development Center (EDC) for the Nigeria Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI+) leading the team that implements reading component activities of the project. Mr. Yusuf holds a Masters Degree in Governance and Public Policy, B.S. in Political Science from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, and a Professional Diploma in Education from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.