Amidst continuous educational reform and top-down and bottom-up pressures on education systems, it is important not to lose sight of the main participants in education. What unites the contributions to this open issue is that they give voice to teachers, students, principals and policy makers. Without their cooperation the educational process cannot live up to expectations or comes to a grinding halt altogether. The contributions on teachers and principals demonstrate vividly how these key agents in the delivery of education struggle with increasing workloads and responsibilities, accountability processes, professional development programmes and new curriculum initiatives. They show that teachers’ and principals’ reception of and response to reforms is not uniform but depends on context, individual background and their own expectations and preferences regarding leadership and educational objectives. More broadly, they reiterate the obvious truth that the interests of principals and teachers do not always coincide with those of policy makers or parents, which often leads to the former delivering the curriculum in such a way that it departs significantly from the planned and intended one. The two papers on student voices in very different contexts point to an interesting contrast. While the study on Dutch children’s attitudes towards democracy shows these children to be very vocal in their opinions but lacking in reflection on these opinions, the study on girls in Pakistan emphasises that only through the ‘work of hearing’ can the original voices of girls not mimicking Western paradigms be accessed. The article on religious education in three conflict regions documents the difficulty of curriculum writers, experts on religious education and policy makers to overcome sectarian divisions and reform a segregated education system. Lastly, the paper on the reform of compulsory education in Turkey demonstrates that politicians also face multiple pressures in educational decision-making. They perform a careful balancing act between a global normative discourse on human rights and democracy and local demands and exigencies drawing on each to further their agendas.
Bartels, Onstenk and Veugelers report on a research project in the Netherlands aiming to examine whether and how Philosophy with Children (PwC) contributes to the development of democratic skills and attitudes. The analyses show that children develop relevant reasoning skills and advanced dialogical skills, underpinning the case for embedding PwC in citizenship education in order to promote a critical-democratic citizenship development. The study, however, also shows that Dutch children often state their opinion without subjecting it to critical inquiry. Consequently, from a pedagogical point of view, the authors make a case for a more dialogical – community based – inquiring attitude to complement existing citizenship education programmes.
The paper by Miyazaki presents research on primary school teachers’ reception of a continuing professional development project in Senegal: PREMST. It finds that PREMST helped teachers envision how teaching should be conducted, but did not necessarily bring a positive change in the learning of pupils because it did not change how teachers think about teaching. It highlights the resistance of teachers to critical thinking, individualised learning and other elements associated with learner-centred pedagogies, and therefore concludes that more effort is needed to make teachers see the benefits of learner-centred pedagogy.
The study by Kim and Youngs draws on institutional theory to examine teachers’ and principals’ perceptions of new teacher evaluation policies, the factors that influence such perceptions, and their implications for the implementation of these policies in Seoul (Korea) and Michigan (USA). While Korean teachers strongly disagreed with the new teacher evaluation policy in Seoul and implemented it in ways that were not intended by policy makers, the Michigan teachers varied in their perceptions and implementation of the policies, often displaying more compliant attitudes and behaviours. The paper speculates that this conspicuous difference might be related to a difference in teacher status. While Korean teachers are hired permanently with their job status not depending on their evaluation ratings or students’ test scores, US teachers’ job status is more likely to be affected by their students’ achievement levels or their performance ratings. Under these circumstances, teachers in the USA might not be able to voice strong disagreement with the teacher evaluation policy or weaken the influence of the policy.
The paper by Khoja-Moolji starts by noting that there is an increasing focus on highlighting the voices of girls from the Global South in transnational campaigns for girls’ education and empowerment. It argues that eliciting/granting voice to marginalised groups involves doing the ‘work of hearing’; devoid of this, the voices become a mere add-on, blandly and mechanically repeating Western discourses about women’s rights. The article highlights that, in relation to Pakistani girls, the work of hearing will uncover narratives other than those of oppression and victimisation. We will hear stories of hope, reconstruction and resourcefulness, all of which are equally authentic.
In their article on the views and perceptions of European school principals on educational reform, Rinne, Järvinen, Tikkanen and Aro start by observing that neoliberal education policies have altered the operational environments of schools and affected school principals’ job descriptions and requirements. As a result of managerialism, decentralisation and increasing competition between schools, principals are increasingly responsible for profitability and marketing in addition to their role as pedagogical leaders. Using the data from an online questionnaire distributed among principals from eight European countries, their study shows that the views of the principals do not consistently reflect the structures of the national education systems. Questions related to educational equality highlighted the clearest differences. The more unequal the education system is, the more importance principals attach to supporting the students in the weakest positions.
Drawing on world culture and local culture explanations of educational change, the article by Akboga attempts to understand the dynamics of the educational reform in Turkey in 1997 that expanded compulsory primary education from five to eight years. To do so, it analysed speeches given by opponents and proponents of the reform in Turkish parliament. Imam-Hatip schools, vocational secondary schools for educating religious functionaries, were central to these debates. In support of world culture explanations, both sides of the debate made references to Western educational models and universal values such as democracy and human rights to frame and legitimise their arguments. However, all these arguments were embedded in local cultural issues and political constellations. The paper therefore proposes that both world culture and local culture should be considered when analysing national policy changes since local actors can easily appropriate global developments to support their local cultural and political interests.
The contribution by Fontana considers initiatives to reform religious education after violent identity-based conflicts in Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Macedonia. The existing literature generates two hypotheses on the political function of religious education after violent conflicts: (1) that religious education tends to entrench existing ethnic, national and political cleavages or (2) that religious education helps further mutual knowledge, integration and social cohesion after violent conflicts. The findings clearly confirm the first hypothesis. Although this approach does not necessarily hamper short-term peace and political instability, it does not explicitly foster mutual understanding, ecumenism and social cohesion among members of previously warring groups. In fact, it may help socialise students into the cultural milieus for continued inter-communal conflict.
The paper by Goren and Yemeni begins by noting that global citizenship education (GCE) has been advocated as a particularly useful political socialisation programme in conflict-ridden states and multi-cultural contexts, given its potential for peace education. However, in the conflict-ridden society of Israel, GCE has remained underdeveloped, possibly in part because of the local orientation of the Israeli curriculum. The paper finds that teachers perceive global citizenship differently along three major dimensions: (1) along boundaries of global citizenship, (2) practical aspects of GCE and (3) the presumed effect in the context of Israel. However, it also finds that teachers in both international and local schools seemed to believe that GCE is better suited for students from strong socioeconomic backgrounds, indicating a possible expansion of the opportunity gap discussed in the scholarship in the field of global citizenship.
Last but not least we would like to wholeheartedly thank Caroline Dyer and Nitya Rao for their invaluable contribution to Compare. For the past six years Caroline has been a dedicated chair of the editorial board and Nitya a committed co-editor. Under their leadership Compare gained significantly in prestige, readership and reputation. The journal has been re-accepted into Thompson Reuter’s Social Sciences Citation Index, which has led to a great increase in the number of submitted articles.