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The intensities of the contemporary moment continue to prompt reflections on the strengths and limitations of approaches typically used to study education policy reform. The central contention of this essay is that policy sociology and its application within education offers needed vantage points on contemporary pressing global policy problems. Future studies would do well to keep the footprint of existing frameworks, which emphasize policy networks and mobilities, power dynamics within these flows, and the focus on doing research that speaks to concerns of stakeholders. The next generation of policy sociologists can further strengthen the relevance and rigor of the analytic scheme by leaning into methodologies that further attend empirically and descriptively to power asymmetries within policy networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global migration, the quest by diverse groups for equality, and the rise of populist nationalism have complicated the development of citizenship and citizenship education in nations around the world. Many racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups are denied structural inclusion into their nation-state. Consequently, they do not fully internalize the values and symbols of the nation-state, develop a strong identity with it, or acquire political efficacy. They focus primarily on particularistic group needs and goals rather than the overarching goals of the nation-state. I conceptualize this process as failed citizenship and present a typology that details failed, recognized, participatory, and transformative citizenship. I describe the role of the schools in reducing failed citizenship and helping marginalized groups become efficacious and participatory citizens in multicultural nation-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I probe a question at the core of comparative education—how to realize the right to education for all and ensure opportunities to use that education for future participation in society. I do so through examination of refugee education from World War II to the present, including analysis of an original data set of documents (n = 214) and semistructured interviews (n = 208). The data illuminate how refugee children are caught between the global promise of universal human rights, the definition of citizenship rights within nation-states, and the realization of these sets of rights in everyday practices. Conceptually, I demonstrate the misalignment between normative aspirations, codes and doctrines, and mechanisms of enforcement within nation-states, which curtails refugees’ abilities to activate their rights to education, to work, and to participate in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that there is a need for higher education researchers to become aware of methodological nationalism (MN) and take steps to reframe their scholarship in new ways. It illuminates two characteristics of MN prevalent in higher education research and suggests that although a few researchers have attempted to move beyond MN in the higher education globalization literature, most remain encapsulated in a view of nation-state equates society. The authors address this gap by arguing for the expansion of analytic approach to some of the common phenomena studied within U.S. higher education (such as college student experience, diversity, and governance) and highlight how these typical objects of study would transform once we overcome MN. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay is a critique of the scientific and policy rationales for transnational standardization. It analyzes two examples of policy export: early childhood standards in one of North America’s oldest Indigenous communities and the ongoing development of international standards for university teaching. It examines calls for American education to look to Finland, Canada, and Singapore for models of reform and innovation, focusing on the complex historical, cultural, and political settlements at work in these countries. The author addresses two affiliated challenges: first, the possibility of a principled understanding of evidence and policy in cultural and political-economic context, and second, the possibility of a mediative educational science that might guide policy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Worldwide immigration and quests for rights by minority groups have caused social scientists and educators to raise serious questions about liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship that historically have dominated citizenship education in nation-states. The author of this article challenges liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship and citizenship education. He argues that citizenship education should be reformed so that it reflects the home cultures and languages of students from diverse groups, and he contends that group rights can help individuals to attain structural equality. In the final part of the article, he discusses the implications of his analysis for transforming citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]