Multilateral interventions, based on evidence from large-scale surveys, tend to promote the idea that quality and equity can be combined and that globalization enables a more universalized, standardized approach to achieving this. However, in countries where educational supply fails to meet demand, there continues to be a polarization between policies for educational equity and those promoting individualized rights to a quality education. The justification of this book chapter reflects paradigmatic approaches to equity and quality in comparative literature to ascertain positional frames of reference in order to improve the way in which equity and quality might be viewed and acted upon. The first literature review consists of comparative education articles that incorporate both equity and quality as descriptors in English-medium texts. The second review consists of chapters in this section not only to help summarize each, respectively, but to analyze them using a modified version of McTaggart and Kemmis' practice architectures in order to highlight the psychological and sociological dimensions from outsider/insider perspectives. The aim is to provide direction in terms of the complexity between equity and quality education on the one hand and the identification of new trends from various approaches and lenses on the other. This book chapter reviews the assumption that perspectives of equity and quality education can be informed by the visualization of evidence and the comparability of contexts through textual, documentary analysis.

Zusammenfassung Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Studien- und Berufswahlmotive von Studierenden des Grundschullehramts aus Deutschland, der Schweiz, Schweden, Rumänien und China auf Grundlage der STeaM/I-Datensätze, vergleicht sie mit den Motiven von Lehramtsstudierenden für weiterführende Schulen und setzt sie in den Kontext mit länderspezifischen strukturellen Bedingungen und Berufsbildern. Ausgehend von einem Vergleich intrinsischer, extrinsischer und pragmatischer Motive zeigen sich länderspezifische Unterschiede. Insgesamt zeigen intrinsische Motive die höchsten Ausprägungen, wobei dem chinesischen Motivprofil mit einer verhältnismäßig niedrigen intrinsischen und einer verhältnismäßig hohen pragmatischen Motivation eine Sonderrolle zukommt. Während die deutschen Befragten neben intrinsischen auch verhältnismäßig hohe extrinsische Motive aufweisen, die sich mit den Vorteilen einer Verbeamtung in Beziehung bringen lassen, messen schwedische Befragte insbesondere der gesellschaftlichen Relevanz und Schweizer Studierende biographischen Erfahrungen sowie dem Motiv des Lehramts als Traumberuf eine im Vergleich zu den anderen Ländern jeweils besonders hohe Bedeutung zu. Demgegenüber fallen die schulartspezifischen Unterschiede sowohl länderübergreifend als auch länderspezifisch gering aus. Während die generellen schulartspezifischen Tendenzen bisherige Forschung bestätigen, zeigen sich im Ländervergleich Relativierungen, etwa hinsichtlich der geringeren Rolle fachlicher Motive für Grundschullehramtsstudierende. Die Ergebnisse geben Hinweise auf den Einfluss struktureller Bedingungen innerhalb der einzelnen Untersuchungsländer auf die Studien- und Berufswahl von Lehramtsstudierenden – etwa hinsichtlich Gehaltsstruktur oder Fachlichkeit der Ausbildung – und lassen Implikationen auf die Professionalisierung von Lehrkräften zu, etwa hinsichtlich der Notwendigkeit, biographische Erlebnisse als Motivation für die Berufswahl angemessen zu reflektieren.

This chapter reports on recent mixed method research investigating the comparability between assessment in relation to linguistic and cultural diversity. It takes as its premise that assessment is an integral part of instruction that becomes a main component for attaining of equal opportunities. Therefore, assessment plays a key role in terms of the wider consequences at both individual and societal levels. One of the central functions of assessment is its measure of quality assurance and comparability for grading to such an extent that it is readily employed to indicate evidence of student achievement of standards and quality. This may sometimes present issues in terms of learner diversity. We focus on the challenges facing teaching in linguistically diverse learning settings in which a foreign language may be used as an alternative to instruction. Here we draw on a recent study from two separate multilingual learning contexts in Sweden. We shed light on the generic questions arising from such disjuncture in these linguistically diverse educational sites as evidence on a call for much needed scholarly attention on the quality aspect in assessment.

This chapter explores the value of international mobility from two distinct, contested value positions, one of which sees internationalisation as a common good from which to harness intercultural understanding and harvest global peace, and the other which positions internationalisation. It raises critical questions about the opportunities and challenges of international mobility in the above two value stances. Which different articulated conceptualisations of international mobility operate, and how? What are the impacts of the mix of local, social, and cultural (including Indigenous) circumstances for example, in teacher education? The chapter investigates how international education experiences affect students within indigenous educational contexts and the implications thereof. International mobility or the 'global exchanges of capital, knowledge and cultural practices' appear to effect numerous positive outcomes for those who undertake them. Indigenous students and teacher educators may have been practising resistance to, or resilience in the face of, their intra-national 'host' culture since infancy.

The present study compares student teachers’ career choice motives and their relationship with stress-inducing thoughts across five European countries. A previously established factorial structure for career choice motives embedded within self-determination theory was supported. The factors consist of intrinsic motives, such as interest in educational work with children, and extrinsic motives, such as financial security. Furthermore, differences in the importance of these factors in choosing the teaching profession across countries were found. Results further revealed evidence for a link between extrinsic motives and stress-inducing cognitions. Conclusions and implications for teaching practice are discussed.

This article begins with the proposition that inter- and transdisciplinarity offer an important methodological grounding for collaborative HE research addressing complex agendas such as HE internationalization. Internationalization acts as a figure for the ‘troubled’ nature of higher education; hence we begin with the larger problem, discussing the current crises of disciplinary knowledge as the background question. We set out a framework for understanding and conceptualizing inter- and transdisciplinarity as a meta-theoretical approach that problematizes reductive and disciplinary approaches, in favour of research and analytical strategies which can work with, and across, differences. To work further through and operationalize different possibilities offered by inter-and transdisciplinary approaches to HE internationalizations, we discuss the use of tools such as social cartography to do ‘bridging work’ across different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds and contexts. A non-formal practitioner–collaborator project is discussed to highlight emergent dimensions of collaboration that might otherwise be overlooked. Inter- and transdisciplinarity are not pre-specified specialized ‘methods’ but, rather, are orientations that may take reductive, convergent, divergent or emergent pathways. Inter- and transdisciplinarity can perhaps be best treated as a problematizing and open-ended methodological approach that foregrounds plurality and contestation, orienting research frameworks towards inclusiveness, tensions, unpredictability and complexity.

The present study compares career choice motives of future early childhood educators studying for a tertiary qualification. Suitable analyses of this kind are still missing. Diverging training systems, traditions and professional images in the different countries are related to certain motives. These motives are categorised according to a theory that is used as a theoretical framework. The study takes into account 468 student teachers from Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Romania and is methodologically based on variance analyses. Overall, intrinsic motives were found to be of greater significance. This applies equally to all countries. Furthermore, addressee-related motives are more pronounced among Swiss and German prospective early childhood educators than among those from Sweden or Romania. On the contrary, extrinsic motives have a stronger presence among Romanian student teachers. Income and prestige, as the only exceptions, are important for students from Sweden and Switzerland. The results are discussed referring to country-specific working conditions and the current status of professionalisation processes existing in problem areas.

Internationalizing higher education : comparing the imagined with actual worlds of international scholar-practitioners

This contribution presents results from the career choice motives of German, Romanian, Swedish and Californian students enrolled in teacher training programs. It compares their intrinsic, extrinsic ...

This comparative case study addresses a timely issue engaging researchers involved in the internationalisation of Nordic Higher Education, in the context of Sweden and Finland. The study examines a hypothetical imaginary in the transition between university international policy statements and their understandings from the position of a globalised episteme. The investigation forms a tag-project as part of a funded large international research project examining ethical internationalism in times of global crises, involving a partnership between more than twenty higher education institutions in excess of ten countries across five continents. The data was collected using a mixed-methods design, whilst being controlled across the matched data collection period in 2013-2014. Data consisted of policy texts, surveys and interviews. The current research inquiry reports on a within and across comparative analyses of certain policy texts and follow-up interviews with university management. The results yield logical support for a global higher education imaginary driving internationalisation in ways which reveal paradoxical associations between the imagined and the real worlds of international scholar-practitioners.

This paper concerns research issues on curriculum, pedagogy and the creative use of method in international higher education. It is motivated by the witnessing of a recent shifting in consensus within the global research communities on international education, towards curriculum renewal of shared knowledge within the field. The article enters into an imaginary of alternative pedagogical routes in IHE and contributes to the collective dialogue by way of a case example using creative writing for transitioning from the actual to the possible in international education. The paper narrates a creatively assembled case study on interdisciplinary methodology. It culminates through correspondence between an international doctoral researcher of Fine Arts and a senior scholar of International Education. The article explores autobiographical research accounts about geographical displacement, the subjectivities produced in international scholarly spaces and their new epistemological imprints on the international student transition experience. The article offers generative curriculum insight that combines interdisciplinary methods through which to feasibly implement pedagogical strategies for renewal of internationalized curriculum beyond times of educational crises.

This paper focuses on the study and career choice motives of students of early childhood education in the context of different job profiles and paths to professionalization. It is based on a comparison between Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. The study and career choice motives of students of early childhood education (N = 416) from the three countries are determined and compared using MANOVAs. Main differences lie in the orientation of intrinsic motives (clientele vs. society based) and in the value of extrinsic motives. The findings are discussed with regard to recommendations for the process of professionalization of early childhood education in Germany.

This paper focuses on the study and career choice motives of students of early childhood education in the context of different job profiles and paths to professionalization. It is based on a compar ...

In this keynote address, I am going to address the issues of culture as a central agency for contemporary change, by raising a number of meaningful questions related to responsive cultural encounters in education. Culture is an issue close to the heart of contemporary education, yet there seems to be both a need, as well as some fatigue in the education community, over the debates about the place of culture in education.At the same time, we are witnessing a world climate that is currently urging the global community to come up with solutions to a number of very complex issues which in many ways are larger than ourselves. I will in this talk invite us to think about the anatomy of culture, as it may contain the components of intentional actions, our practices, and the functions of our work, that bring change through the action and processes in cultural know-how. I will attempt at untangling some of these issues, by drawing on the experiences of our international research community.

Globalization has meant that universities are under increased pressure to internationalize through mobility, research partnerships, and internationalised programing. Global citizenship is an increasingly mainstream term being used by the UN and OECD regarding education for the 21st century, yet research about its conceptualization in higher education comes largely from English-speaking contexts (e.g. Jorgenson & Shultz, 2012). This paper presents a piece of an inter-disciplinary, international mixed-methods research project funded through the Academy of Finland and involving 20 universities in 10 countries. It responds to concerns that current economic crises have resulted in an intensification of those internationalization policies in universities that prioritize profit-seeking over those that prioritize ethical alternatives (Khoo, 2011). Drawing on critical and post/de-colonial theories (e.g. Andreotti, 2009), the project considers how, when left unchecked, internationalisation is normalized so as to re-direct social and political values such as global citizenship and social responsibility towards economic values thereby reproducing ideals of exceptionalism, entitlement, and (market) expansionism (Rhoads & Szelenyi, 2010); and denying reproduction of systems of inequities (King, Marginson, & Naidoo, 2013; Rizvi, 2007). Selecting social cartography as a method to analyze the findings, the project aims to create a socially accountable map of shifting imaginaries of higher education as expressed in trends in internationalization (Paulston, 1999). In this paper, we focus on imaginaries of global citizenship. We will present a heuristic co-created by project partners and use it to analyze responses from teacher-education students studying in two Nordic universities, focusing on two specific survey questions: Do you see yourself as a global citizen? How do you think global citizens should think, relate and/or act in the world? The heuristic consists of three discursive orientations—neoliberal, liberal and critical—and four interfaces—neoliberal-liberal, liberal-critical, critical-neoliberal, and all four. Interfaces indicate where signifiers are deployed with multiple meanings. The mapping helps to identify dominant discourses, articulating where there are foreclosures of and possibilities for an ethical approach. The project contributes data and frameworks for understanding existing possibilities. By making discursive configurations and interfaces jointly intelligible, processes in higher education can be more informed by ethically oriented versions of international education.

Education is about making a difference in the lives of those who experience its interactions as a social justice project of modern democracy. It is intended to encourage the free exploration of ideas and the development of creativity. Quality education needs the underpinning of access to good teaching, challenging curriculum and engaged learning. The articles in this issue demonstrate some of the ways researchers approach these issues.