Full Program

The foundation of comparison underlying CIE over the past fifty years has moved from a sole focus on measurement, which seeks to refine metrics to engage in sound evidence-based findings, to recognition of the importance of qualitative understandings of context and meaning. In reflecting on the role, function, and use of research, CIE now attends to larger philosophical questions that are explicit, implicit, overt, and covert. Some of these questions relate to how we know what we know; and, how do our experiences color what and how we know? Critical issues of representation, recognition, knowledge production and values in the design and application of CIE research encourage (and indeed, we argue, demand) us to ask tough questions of ourselves and about our work; questions that require careful reflection and thought, to navigate through and towards a better future for CIE research and educational change more generally.

Room 308 - Participatory action research and educational development: South Asian perspectives
Huma Kidwai, World Bank; Erik Byker, University of North Carolina; Matthew Witenstein, University of Redlands; Radhika Iyengar, Earth Institute, Columbia University; Rohit Setty, University of Michigan; Payal Shah, University of South Carolina; Shabnam Koirala-Azad, University of San Francisco.

Room 310 - Comparative approaches

1. 1. A comparative exploration of teaching inequality in international comparative education (Bernhard T. Streitwieser, George Washington University; Romina Giselle Kasman, Organization of American States)
2. The comparative impact of pressures to build a world class university and increase English-language publication (David Post, Penn State University)
3. Secondary school transformation in post-Soviet countries: research trends in regional data collection and theory building in multi-case cross-national studies (Elena Minina, National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Institute of Education)
4. The power of place: Toward study abroad for social change (Jennifer M. Pipitone, College of Mount Saint Vincent)

Room 311 - Epistemology, objectivity, ethics

1. Let the world sing: Soundscapes, arts-based educational research, and shifting epistemologies in comparative and international education (Derrick Tu, York University)
2. Intertwining considerations for analytic honesty (Gia Cromer, George Mason University)
3. Cross-cultural curriculum development: A question of comparative epistemologies (Anne Vera Cruz, Boston College & Paul Edward Madden, Boston College)
4. Problematizing objectivity in comparative education research (Brian D. Denman, University of New England)

Room 312 - Higher education in CIE

1. Teaching comparative education to undergraduates and non-specialists: Navigating the epistemological waters (Richard Bamattre, University of Minnesota Twin Cities & Laura Wangsness Willemsen, University of Minnesota Twin Cities)
2. Politicizing the technical: Higher education reform in the Middle East and North Africa (Elizabeth Buckner, OISE, University of Toronto)
3. Critical comparative case study and inclusive research: An integrated approach to the study of Vietnam's higher education reform efforts (Mary Beth Marklein, George Mason University)
4. An investigation of ways in which the U.S. government's higher education research paradigms and programmatic offerings have been shaped by perceptions of national security (Kristen Allen, George Washington University & Hanover Research)

Room 308 - Positionality, justice, and methodological mishaps: Navigating complexity in CIE research
Monisha Bajaj, University of San Francisco; Meagan Call-Cummings, George Mason University; Maria Hantzopoulos, Vassar College; Karen Ross, University of Massachusetts, Boston; Payal Shah, University of South Carolina.

Room 310 - Participatory methodologies and decolonizing discourse

1. The messy discourse of menstrual hygiene management (Lina Heaster-Ekholm, University of Massachusetts Amherst & Sahara Pradhan, University of Massachusetts Amherst)
2. Examining the implications of ethical tension points of a Photovoice project with English language learners (Meagan Call-Cummings; Melissa Hauber-Özer; Christie Byers, George Mason University)
3. Exploring participatory methods with young adolescent girls: Hearing, seeing, and understanding (Sandra Stacki, Hofstra University)
4. How can locally-driven small data transform knowledge hierarchies in international education and development? Evidence from an NGO’s practice in Malawi (Yu-Chen Chiu, University of Pennsylvania)

Room 311 - Policy, agendas, citizenship, decolonizing discourse

1. Questioning the hegemonic discourse on international large-scale assessments (Heitor Santos, Swarthmore College)
2. How Freirean pedagogy and transnational feminism serve as guiding frameworks for avoiding the fallacy of misplaced concreteness: A critical examination of global citizenship and citizenship education (Lauren DeCrosta, University of Maryland)
3. Parental Involvement, Adolescent Romance, and Educational Attainment in Rural China (Xiaoran Yu, Xinwei Zhang, Damian Wyman, Peggy Kong, Lehigh University)
4. Re-envisioning educational research: the international agenda on “what works” in research and the effect on equality/inequality (Halla B. Holmarsdottir, Oslo and Akershus, University College of Applied Sciences)
5. Successful failure: The problem with policy borrowing in RAND's “Education for a New Era” in Qatar (Rehenuma Asmi, Allegheny College)

Room 312 - Methodological innovations

1. Boundary objects and international education: Investigating collaboration and partnership within a field course in the Brazilian Amazon (Matthew Aruch, University of Maryland)
2. Using the extended case method to rethink ethnographic research on education (Andrew Frankel, University of Virginia)
3. Interrogating intercultural learning (Lauren Collins, University of Denver)
4. Secret gardens: Investigating how teacher-parents in Ontario navigate school choice for their own kids (Julie Chami Lindsay, OISE, University of Toronto)
5. Girls Education in Afghanistan - Complexities of Research and the Need for Innovation (Shama Dossa, Habib University)

How has the historical context of colonization in South Asia (a shared commonality with that of other regions and countries) muffled the voices of local practitioners and researchers? In what ways have these historical experiences of dominance heavily influenced research and methodology and the discourses accompanying them? In what ways can the CIE community foster inclusive and creative methodological spaces for practitioners and researchers that more clearly make meaning of educational contexts than the dominant Western ones? Speakers will consider the role the CIE community should play in fostering richer inclusion of local researcher identity and positionality in methodological practice to foster safe spaces for engaging in and shaping CIE research.

This plenary will interrogate the legitimization of knowledge in scholarship, funding and evidence-based practices in comparative and international education. Two questions guide the plenary's focus: 1) How can CIE investigate power and authority dynamics and their implications for gender and education research and practice? 2) In what ways can research and practice destabilize and transform knowledge hierarchies? Participants and panelists will engage in an interactive discussion to (re)consider how scientific knowledge is constructed and disseminated in the field.

Room 308 - Who watches the watchmen if not each other? Collective reflections on the generation of knowledge about Cuba
Brendan DeCoster; Timothy Reedy; Jeremy Gombin-Sperling; Melanie Baker; Hang M. Le, University of Maryland-College Park (all authors)

Room 310 - Gender and intersectionality in CIE research

1. Ending the gender digital divide in Myanmar: A problem-driven political economy assessment (Sheila Scott with Swathi Balasubramanian and Amber Ehrke, IREX)
2. What does it mean to practice choice? Gendered performances of education, piety, and empowerment by Muslim professional women in Pakistani rural communities (Ayesha Khurshid, Florida State University)
3. Research considerations in a study of global LGBT rights movements (Naomi A. Moland, Teachers College -- Columbia; Melissa Mott, Teachers College – Columbia)
4. Intersectionality rising: Student protests in the United States and South Africa (Carol Corneilse, Independent researcher; Cheri-Leigh Erasmus, South Africa-Washington International Program; Phyllis Slade Martin, George Mason University

Room 311 - Questions around immigrant and migrant voice in CIE research

1. Bridging the gap: Exploring the factors behind career-struggle of South Asian skilled immigrant women in Toronto (Rozalina Omar, OISE, University of Toronto)
2. A cross-sectoral research: Multi-dimensions of migrant worker policy in Japan (Fumitake Tsukatani; Daisuke Fujii; Takayuki Ogawa; Mie Shigemitsu, Osaka University of Economics [all authors])
3. Problemazing migrant children, migrant school, migrant education, and urbanization in China: A Photovoice Project (Jingjing Lou, Beloit College)
4. Images in the mirror: The first Tibetan newspaper and a new public pedagogy (Andrew Frankel, University of Virginia)

Room 312 - Conceptual and methodological insights into reimagining CIE research

1. Cosmopolitanism and Rabindranath Tagore: Linking international agendas and policies (Sumona Roy, OISE, University of Toronto)
2. Sense, spirit, synchrony: Toward an experiential comparative education (Diane M. Hoffman, University of Virginia)
3. Mapping the shaping of the intellectual landscape of comparative and international Education: Wrestling coloniality of modernity in research by border-engaging and de-centering/de-peripherizing (Jose Cossa, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University)
4. Impact evaluation: Science or ideology? (Steve Klees, University of Maryland)

What does the future of CIE research look like? As policymakers, practitioners, and scholars, where do we want CIE research to go? Plenary speakers will debate the complexity of quality, rigor, impact, and ethics as it pertains to new developments in the field. Over the past twenty years, we have seen shifts in methodological approaches that attempt to move beyond the narrower definitions of empiricism and science to embrace new ontological approaches, fresh methodological designs and innovative and increasingly technology-savvy tools. Scholars are more willing to take risks with their research, creating an urgency to redefine how quality is defined in this landscape while also ensuring transparency and rigor.