Chapter 7: Clarifying Regions as “Models”: Cultural Similarities and Regional Conflict

The early chapters of this book examined different aspects of how teachers and the nation-state have interacted over time, creating unique national logics that inform both the outlines of the profession, and the nature of public education as well. In each of the chapters on professionalism, teacher education, leadership, and collective mobilization, we saw that national divergence from regional trends was quite common. Within comparative education multiple scholars have argued that nations interact with each other to produce distinct regional effects. For example, Belyavina and Steiner-Khamsi (2019), suggest that historical ties within some regions (e.g., having been under the umbrella of the Soviet Union) may also have produced strong regional similarities in national policies regarding teachers.