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Educational scholars, particularly those working in comparative education, have largely failed to recognise, let alone discuss, the impending finite-ness of global resources. The field continues to operate on an assumption of infinite resources, an implicit cultural horizon in place since at least the Western Enlightenment. It has missed the epochal shift that is now upon us; unable to contribute to the deep transformation of research and practices that has now become urgent. Herein we discuss how such concerns might be addressed, suggesting an approach that centres ontological alterity through comparative method as means of making the turn towards a sustainable future.

Well-being 2030 has become the latest rationale for the OECD's education work. This vision has given rise to new assessments of student well-being beginning with PISA 2015. The OECD, recognising the problems of PISA 2015, conceptualised a wider student well-being construct in PISA 2018, and attempted to measure 'students' feelings'. However, analyses of the OECD's affective turn reveal major problems remain. Our critique is empirically underpinned by an innovative analytical strategy: comparing PISA 2018 student questionnaire translations across different 'economies' that use the same written language (China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan). Our analyses confirm that the OECD imagines a cultural and context-free world, one in which translation and measurements are simply technical problems to be engineered, rather than deeper 'problems' of worldviews that require attunement. To encourage the OECD to recognise these differences in its future assessments, we offer starting points from recent research in cultural psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent, highly influential comparative studies have made strong statistical claims that improvements on global learning assessments such as PISA will lead to higher GDP growth rates. These claims have provided the primary source of legitimation for policy reforms championed by leading international organisations, most notably the World Bank and OECD. To date there have been several critiques but these have been too limited to challenge the validity of the claims. The consequence is continued utilisation and citation of these strong claims, resulting in a growing aura of scientific truth and concrete policy reforms. In this piece we report findings from two original studies that invalidate these statistical claims. Our intent is to contribute to a more rigorous global discussion on education policy, as well as call attention to the fact that the new global policy regime is founded on flawed statistics.

Seeking to contribute to recent attempts to rethink the deepest foundations of the field, this paper offers news ways of contemplating time, specifically its relations to self, nihilism, and schooling. We briefly review how some leading Western thinkers have contemplated time before detailing Japanese scholars who have offered divergent, original, and arguably more sophisticated, theoretical accounts. We then illustrate these ideas by sketching how Japan "borrowed time" following the abrupt political rupture of 1868, showing how "Linear Time" came to be disseminated and diffused, largely through modern schooling. Last, we spotlight the nihilism that has arisen as consequence. Our primary aim is not empirical elaboration, however, but instead disclosure of a complex of relations that the field of comparative education has yet to discuss. We offer both the experience-cum-thought of Japan and this complex itself as reconstructive resources for the field which remains shallow in its parochial presumptions and unwillingness to engage ontologically.