These eleven essays are a timely response by an international set of authorities to the deepening interest in research comparing educational systems from countries around the world.

The contributors chronicle the substantial growth and changing focus of comparative education, offer criticism of this type of research, and describe recent developments in education worldwide. Topics include a profile of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and a summary of the organization’s key findings; the impact of international agencies like the World Bank on the reconstruction of schooling in Africa; the effects of social upheaval on education in Russia; the expansion of secondary education and independent schools in the new Czech Republic; the removal of vestiges of Communism from civic education in Romania; new forms of teacher training in Israel and China; and reforms in the entrance examination process in Japan.

The contributors are scholars at universities in Australia, China, Europe, Israel, and the United States, a Romanian school inspector, and a research pyschologist from the United States.

Internationalizing a School of Education examines how Michigan State University has pursued internationalization and globalization through an integration-infusion approach to research, teaching, and outreach. The integration-infusion approach was introduced in MSU’s College of Education in the early 1980s as a replacement for the more disconnected comparative education program. This approach offers a vision where all faculty members and students are knowledgeable about education in all its international diversity, where their conceptions and aspirations are influenced by international research and experience, and where they reach out to other countries in collaborative efforts to do research, inform policy, and improve practice. Featuring profiles of faculty members and students who were leaders of this integration-infusion approach, this text provides a survey of the landscape of comparative education in the United States while examining channels of internationalization specific to MSU, highlighting the success of integration-infusion at an institutional level.
 

Private Sectors in Higher Education examines how the tasks of higher education have been divided between public and private institutions, and with what consequences. In doing so, the author analyzes both the comparative structures of educational systems and their social relations. Besides correcting the widespread misperception that private higher education is predominately an American phenomenon, this study should enlarge the range of experience that can be brought to bear on issues currently facing public policy and private higher education. It constitutes the first scholarly treatment of private higher education outside the United States. Case studies of private sectors in seven countries—Belgium, France, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Sweden—form the core of this work. This material provides a perspective for probing several underlying rationales for private higher education in the United States. And finally, the author analyzes the issue of government financial support for private higher education. This book should significantly contribute to enlarging the framework of discussion of this question by broadening the understanding of the social and political underpinnings of public/private division in higher education.