Plenary Sessions

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.

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.

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.