This study examines how Rwandan and Sierra Leonean secondary school teachers negotiate narratives generated by transitional justice mechanisms (TJMs) when teaching histories of violence. TJMs in both countries produced collective memory; yet their integration into national curricula differs. The Rwandan government enforces an official state narrative, whereas Sierra Leone's limited state mediation gives teachers greater discretion. Informed by 60 teacher interviews and over 20 hours of classroom observation, the study reveals that teachers in both contexts adopt TJM narratives, even when such narratives are absent from official educational materials. Drawing upon literature from the sociology of knowledge, comparative and international education, and memory studies, this article underscores the complex relationship between state power, TJMs, and educator narratives. These findings contribute to a growing body of research on postconflict history education, suggesting that TJMs play a crucial role in how educators understand historical trauma and teach it to future generations.
The lack of clarity within inclusive education is compounded by the ways in which inclusive education reforms circulated from Global North countries to the Global South. Scholars call for contextually and culturally relevant conceptualizations of inclusive education in the Global South. I present a pedagogical approach to inclusive education developed with 22 female teachers in India through 78 interviews and 75 classroom observations, developed through ethnographic case studies of two school-NGO partnerships in Muslim-majority schools. The Hindi term dhyaan, which translates to care or attention, was identified through teacher interviews as a metaphor for teachers' inclusive practices. Conceptualizing dhyaan as a culturally sustaining concept, I demonstrate how teachers practice care and how they reckon with the normative tendencies of inclusive education. Drawing on disability studies and ethics of care, I offer grounded understandings of care and disability in the enactment of inclusive education in India.
Much of the literature on education's multisectoral impacts focuses on attainment or years of schooling, with limited attention to foundational academic skills. Using longitudinal data on adolescent girls in Zambia, we examine whether literacy, numeracy, and nonverbal reasoning are associated with girls' agency, measured as their ability to express opinions and advocate for themselves. The sample includes 1,171 grade 7 girls in three districts in 2017. We estimate linear regressions with school fixed effects to assess relationships between baseline skills (2017) and voice at endline (2018), accounting for baseline voice and covariates. Baseline literacy and literacy gains were significantly associated with higher endline voice scores. Baseline numeracy was not associated with voice in multivariate models, but numeracy gains were associated with higher voice. These findings suggest that learning interventions may enhance academic skills while at the same time contributing to broader goals of gender equity and girls' empowerment.
Gender gaps favoring girls have defined education systems in high-income countries for many years and are becoming increasingly prevalent in low-income countries, including in Kenya. We conduct qualitative interviews with Kenyan primary school teachers and find that these key stakeholders are grappling with different gender narratives and the complexity of gender dynamics, particularly in the wake of extended school closures. Many teachers believe that issues such as early marriage and pregnancy significantly increased during school closures, uniquely affecting girls and girls' education. At the same time, approximately half of teachers observed that girls were doing better academically than boys, both before and after the pandemic. Clear theories were expressed to explain the challenges girls face, but teachers seemed to speculate about the challenges facing boys.
Nearly a decade after a national peace education policy and negotiations to end Colombia's armed conflict, this study uses multilevel, mixed-effects logistic regression to examine the ways in which students' proximity to the conflict, perceptions of curriculum, and classroom context predict young people's attitudes toward learning about conflict, peace, and justice in Colombia. We find that students who self-identify as victims or relatives of victims of the conflict are more likely than their peers who do not identify as directly affected to desire coverage of these sensitive topics in schools. Classroom conditions emerged as a predictor of students' interest and were especially strong among those who did not self-identify as directly affected by the conflict's history of violence and displacement. These findings are complemented by qualitative data on student and teacher perspectives on upholding the right to truth and navigating risks of retraumatization in the classroom.
This article explores the nexus between Islamic education and violent conflict, providing insights into the dynamics of Nigeria's Boko Haram insurgency. Studies on Islamic education and conflict have mostly asked whether Islamic schools contribute to militancy, showing limited interest in their students and teachers. Drawing on 76 interviews and group conversations conducted in northeast Nigeria in 2021-24, we explore what role Qur'anic schools played for the conflict and how the conflict affected them. We examine recent acts of "direct" violence through the prism of long histories of structural and cultural/epistemic violence. We use the notion of "dangerous discourses" to explore why certain groups are prone to being framed as "dangerous" and what dangers ensue from such framings. We investigate how social and political processes "invisibilize" certain forms of violence and argue that, from a decolonial perspective, conflict and education studies should "see" and study Islamic schools in their own right.
Countries transitioning from civil conflict, genocide, or uncertain political contexts must reckon with a nation divided by experience, political allegiance, and views for the future. We draw on data from semistructured interviews with 51 secondary school teachers from three different contexts, including politically divided (United States), conflict (Colombia), and postconflict (Rwanda), to analyze the way in which teachers confront difficult narratives about the past and present. Through the application of symbolic interactionism theory and cultural political economy, this research explores how teachers make meaning through interactions with their students, the curricular context, and the broader sociopolitical context. Our findings point to the importance not only of teachers' own background and positionality but also the politicization of the teaching profession, as well as the broader institutional, policy, and social context, in shaping their approaches, strategies, and comfort level in discussing contentious topics in the classroom.
The pursuit of gender equality in education involves diverse actors operating within institutional contexts that reflect and influence underlying cultural frameworks. This study examines how domestic policy actors with varied institutional affiliations navigate these contexts and advance gender-equality goals. Drawing on 12 in-depth interviews with policy reform actors (government officials and consultants) and civil society actors (nongovernmental organization representatives) in Karachi and Lahore, the findings suggest that domestic actors-mostly urban, educated men-engage in strategic ceremonial compliance, balancing global expectations with local realities and institutional demands. They navigate multiple interpretations of gender equality as they prioritize gender parity to signal professional legitimacy. The study underscores the need to attend to domestic meaning-making practices within institutional contexts in both gender policy and comparative education research.
This study examines how Mexican, Brazilian, and Colombian courts shape education policies and governance, analyzing judicial decisions, legal frameworks, and policy implementation from 2004 to 2024. It reveals a significant convergence in how civil law courts act as policy architects, albeit with varied approaches and success. Colombia's Constitutional Court is interventionist, using structural injunctions for interagency coordination. Brazil's judiciary balances incremental interventions with federal complexities. Mexican courts show cautious activism, mainly in disability rights. The analysis proposes a "judicial synergy governance" model where courts orchestrate reform via multistakeholder coalitions, challenging traditional views on civil law constraints. This highlights how courts can drive change and respect civil law traditions and separation of powers. Effective judicialization hinges on context-specific mechanisms aligning constitutional mandates with institutional capacities and civil society participation, not mimicking common law. This research advances understanding of judicial activism in civil law systems and offers insights for promoting educational equity.
Curriculum is a key mechanism through which states construct and normalize dominant gender ideologies and power relations (Paechter 2000; Apple 2004). Using critical discourse analysis, this article compares gender education curricula in Soviet- and post-Soviet-era Belarus by examining the gender norms, roles, and identities they articulate and the shifting role of education in shaping gender relations in each political era. The comparison reveals a transition from a Soviet-era conceptualization of education as a transformative social force to promote the official gender-equality rhetoric to the post-Soviet model where education functions as a tool of social control to construct and reinforce gender hierarchy. The shift demonstrates how changes in state priorities and ideologies directly shape curriculum development and gender politics. By historicizing gender and the relationship between education and the state, the article contributes to debates on the role of the state in shaping gender relations through education.
This article presents empirical findings from 21 teachers' experiences across Afghanistan during the first year following the Taliban's return to power. It examines the transformations within the school system and their impact on the teaching profession, students, and learning environment. These changes are analyzed through three interrelated dimensions: unpredictability, inflexibility, and unknowable futures. Together, these dimensions inform the development of the concept of pedagogies of unbelonging, a framework that explores how education institutions can actively contribute to social disruption and exclusion. By introducing this concept, the article critiques and extends the comparative education literature on transitologies, highlighting the role of education in shaping and reinforcing societal upheaval during periods of political transition.
This article argues for the relevance and democratic potential of a form of progressive schooling that has developed in Germany over the past decade, the Gemeinschaftsschule (GMS), or community school. Using this type of school as a case study in democratic education, the author responds to relevant criticism and highlights the promise of this approach to satisfying democratic educational ideals that the United States and other national contexts have long fallen short of. Drawing on a developing distinction between integration and inclusion in German educational thinking, and ongoing conversations in philosophy of education broadly, the author argues for the relevance of the GMS to the international comparative education community. Grounded in the work of Amy Gutmann and John Dewey, the second half of the article defends the GMS as a compelling actualization of democratic education, in both its structure and pedagogical commitments.
Shadow education, or private supplementary tutoring aimed at enhancing academic performance and examination preparation, has become a global phenomenon and a significant focus in international and comparative education research. Although much of the literature examines its determinants and effects on academic outcomes, its impact on students' engagement in mainstream classrooms remains underexamined. Using longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of fifth graders in South Korea, this study aimed to fill this research gap by investigating the effect of shadow education on behavioral engagement. Regression analyses showed that students who participated in shadow education during both the fifth and sixth grades exhibited 0.114 standard deviations greater behavioral disengagement in the sixth grade than their nonparticipating peers, after controlling for family, student, and school characteristics. This empirical evidence validates concerns among policy makers and educators in countries with expanding shadow education systems about its potential to undermine student engagement in mainstream education.
Understanding campus climates for interfaith learning in higher education supports universities in achieving their missions of producing global leaders and ensuring equitable access and experiences of campus life for students of diverse religious and nonreligious worldviews. The Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS) was a mixed-method study designed to explore these issues in the United States; recently, UK researchers collaborated with US principal investigators to collaboratively adapt IDEALS to the UK higher education environment. First, using the interfaith learning and development framework as a guide, the authors outline what important aspects of the national and institutional contexts the adaptation process considered. Second, the relational aspects of interfaith learning were explored across contexts using a multiple case study approach, which resulted in cross-context assertions about how students in both countries perceived their campus climates, engaged across worldview differences, and encountered insensitivity about worldviews during their university experience.
National higher education systems vary markedly in their levels of "structural stratification," defined as unequal distributions of financial resources among universities. This study uses financial data from 3,745 universities in 22 OECD countries to provide a large-scale cross-national examination of structural stratification. It employs a robust set of measures to explore national differences in levels, variations, and distributions of resources, along with differences in sources of income and societal correlates of structural stratification. It reports several findings. First, most systems have disparate, skewed distributions of resources and form distinct cross-national groupings. Second, revenue from entrepreneurial "other income" emerges as a key driver of structural stratification cross-nationally. Third, countries with greater structural stratification tend to also have higher income inequality and lower social mobility. We discuss implications for future research, arguing that trends in higher education-national capacity building, promotions of entrepreneurial universities, and internationalization-will likely deepen structural stratification globally.
The COVID-19 pandemic posed major challenges to federal systems, especially in balancing central and subnational responsibilities in education. This study introduces the Remote Education Program Index (REP Index), a novel metric to assess the quality and comprehensiveness of remote education policies adopted during the pandemic. Drawing on the Brazilian case, we evaluate daily data from all 27 subnational units between March 2020 and December 2021, and show that the absence of federal coordination and the loosening of fiscal obligations led to reductions in education spending and contributed to stark disparities in the quality of remote education programs. Our findings underscore that decentralized education management, in the absence of national guidance and redistribution, can exacerbate existing territorial inequalities during emergencies. The REP Index provides a valuable tool for evaluating remote learning policies and offers broader lessons for federations seeking to build more equitable education systems in times of crisis.
