Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2020

Alexander W. Wiseman, Alexander W. Wiseman

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800719095
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Since 2013, the Annual Review of Comparative and International Education has covered significant developments in the field of comparative and international education. The Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2020 begins with a collection of discussion essays about comparative education trends and directions written by both professional and scholarly leaders in the field.
Topics covered in this volume include major theoretical and methodological developments, reports on research-to-practice, area studies and regional developments, and the diversification of comparative and international education. A special introductory chapter examines the diversity in research trends in online versus traditional publications in the field and investigates the differences in content and representation among Global North and Global South research contributions.

PART I

COMPARATIVE EDUCATION TRENDS AND DIRECTIONS

CHAPTER 1

FROM SERENDIPITY TO CONCRETE IDEAS: PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND CONFERENCES IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AS INCUBATORS OF ACADEMIC WORK

Florin D. Salajan and Tavis D. Jules

ABSTRACT

In this essay, the authors explore how professional associations and the scholarly meetings or conferences they organize, such as the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), act as incubators of scholarly inquiry in Comparative and International Education (CIE), but also serve as venues for the further dissemination of the comparative approach in education to inform scholarship and practice. Via an exemplification of our history of collaboration, our commentary particularly emphasizes how conference sites, based on thematic calls, bring together academics in serendipitous ways, to forge new understandings of transformational concepts in their fields and disciplines, and contribute to new forms of educational practice that draw on such novel thematic examinations.

Keywords: Comparative and international education; CIES; professional associations; conferences; collaboration; closure

COLLABORATION SITES IN COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

Hardly an argument can be made against the universal expectation that professional associations, mainly through the conferences they organize, are venues and events that foster collaboration among scholars. In fact, this may be considered an axiom of sorts in the academic world. Emerging studies also appear to confirm this state of affairs, with conference closure having been advanced as a term encapsulating the notion that if two scholars attend the same conference, the odds of their subsequent academic or scientific collaboration leading to joint publications also increase (Su, Wang, Zhang, Bekele, & Xia, 2016; Wang et al., 2017). “Collaborative imperative” (Bozeman & Youtie, 2016) or research collaboration is said to be a “social processes whereby human beings pool their experience, knowledge and social skills with the objective of producing new knowledge, including knowledge as embedded in technology” (Bozeman & Boardman, 2014, p. 12). This is particularly relevant in the context we are discussing here, that is, the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) and its annual conference, as an important forum to consolidate the field and to serve as a conduit for collaboration and publication. In tracing the evolution and in illustrating the development of CIES as one of the leading academic organizations in the field, Swing (2016) cites a participant’s sentiment both in what the society provides as an environment for collaboration and how its annual conferences act as sites for forging scholarly connections. The participant account from two decades ago still eloquently captures the role professional societies play in ensuring a climate conducive to establishing enduring partnerships among scholars:

The annual CIES conference creates a social space where human beings from many different parts of the world connect on topics of mutual interest and learn from one another (even from those [with whom] they may strongly disagree). The greatest value of being a member of this society has come from my interactions with people who have different frames of reference and different realities. (Maria Fatima Rodrigues, 1999, as cited in Swing, 2016, p. 34)

This statement undoubtedly resonates with our own experience of coming together in a purely coincidental manner, then establishing a working and productive relationship. It is telling for the scope of this essay that our collective work in Comparative and International Education (CIE) has come about in a series of fortuitous meetings at the field’s annual conferences (CIES and the World Council of Comparative Education Societies [WCCES]), itself a sign of the unexpected connections and synergies our professional field stimulates and fosters. Such meetings stem from the genuine interest in a particular topic in the conference booklet or attendance at the same presentation, workshop, social event, coffee break, poster session, highlighted panel, or exhibitor’s stand. But co-author collaboration can only emerge if both parties strike up a conversation or are introduced to each other by a third party. Interestingly, even though we are both products of the same graduate program which we were pursuing almost in parallel, neither of us had crossed paths with the other during that time. We had even shared the same academic advisors but, somehow, we moved on parallel tracks, although, as we would discover later, we were working in very similar areas of scholarship. It took roughly a decade for us to meet in the context of a WCCES conference and realize that our scholarly interests were closely aligned. Thus began our collaboration in contributing to the field of CIE, by examining emerging thematic areas, such as the contouring of an educational intelligent economy from a comparative perspective, reconceptualizing CIE as an assemblage of multiple academic interests, and the impact of comparative regionalism on educational policy definition and formulation in polities characterized by various degrees of integration like the European Union (EU) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Moreover, we have also presented our collaborative work in the form of a poster at the vCIES 2020 (virtual CIES).

We found that the work we were and are currently conducting branches out and intersects in several complementary areas of CIE, educational policy, and post-foundational studies. In our work, not unlike that of many of our colleagues, CIES, through its multitude of associations, committees and Special Interest Groups (SIGs), provides both the setting and the incentives to engage in collaborative work, which we then share and disseminate with scholars in our field. In our past and current projects, entailing edited volumes, we relied in large part on connections each of us established through our interactions at past CIES conferences to recruit or invite contributors for our volumes. Such relationships have given us access to each other’s networks while enhancing our effectiveness and leading to higher impact (Bozeman & Youtie, 2016; Wuchty, Jones, & Uzzi, 2007). Collaborative imperatives enable us to share resources while permitting us to draw on our particular specialized topical knowledge. Co-authoring is but one subset of our collaborative endeavors in that together we brainstorm, conceptualize, acquire, analyze, interpret, and think through data and complex problems by pooling our experience, knowledge, and social skills together. In this way, our collaboration is based upon knowledge production, on leveraging our different expertise, and a clear division of labor where “one of the collaborators sets the goal and design of the work and others perform routine tasks” (Bozeman & Youtie, 2016, p. 1719).

However, contributorship (Larivière et al., 2016) and team enterprises are not without their challenges. While hyperauthorship (Cronin, 2005) and multiple-authorship have gotten lots of attention, Bozeman and Youtie (2016) remind us that sometimes a co-author may do minimal or no contributions and are still included in the research. In some instances, collaborators have different ideas, and therefore contributorship becomes hard to discern. It is often difficult to determine if first authorship is based on intellectual contribution as there is no place in publications that explicitly states which author is primarily responsible for the work. In other words, it can be difficult to trace authorship contributions, the allotment of credit, accountability for work, accuracy, and integrity. Often there are issues around “guest authorship,” i.e., individuals who did not contribute substantially to the work, and “ghost authorship,” or individuals who contribute considerably to work but are left out.

We observe that in today’s globalized economy, driven by market fundamentalism, collaborative expertise and knowledge are needed to tackle complex research issues and “wicked problems” – social and cultural challenges that are difficult to solve – in education. In short, co-author behavior enhances scientific collaboration as it gets one out of their “silo” mentality since people who are part of the same community or SIG, which are often created around a thematic area or topic, become visible to one another around a shared sense of academic commonality. Moreover, scientific collaboration gives scholars access to the others’ networks, particularly as we have now become dependent on open source platforms, such as Researchgate and Academia. The rise of social media conference apps, databases, and virtual platforms dedicated to conferences, Twitter hashtags and Facebook and LinkedIn posts, allows users to network and ease logistical hassles, and for co-author collaboration to flourish. Gone are the days of handing out business cards at conferences. Twitter, Researchgate, Academia, LinkedIn, Semantic Scholar, and Google Scholar have become primary networking tools that permit scholars to “follow,” “like,” “track,” and gain access to newsfeeds of the work of other scholars, thus giving them the ability to collaborate in a post-conference setting.

Some platforms are driven by artificial intelligence to go a bit further by recommending a potential co-author through the suggestion of presentation panels and workshops that authors may find interesting. Other apps even incorporate competitive gaming to solicit greater attendee participation and thus allowing potential co-authors to meet and collaborate. These new conference platforms may permit possible collaboration to navigate the multiple sessions and plenary events at a conference, but their long-term impact, if any, on collaborative endeavors needs to be further studied. In short, apps are add-ons to conferences, but virtual platforms cannot generate conference closure.

COLLABORATION IN DISRUPTIVE TIMES

The importance of academic associations as support mechanisms for both intellectual creativity and interpersonal connectivity was highlighted over the past year by the disruption created in the wake of the novel COVID-19 pandemic. That is, in the absence of the vibrant physical medium for exchanges engendered by annual meetings, conferences, symposia, workshops, and other academic events, the impact of one’s creative work has been diminished, but most of all, the potential for developing new connections with scholars in the field has been all but put on pause. Perhaps existing relationships can function uninterrupted, within the confines and adaptations necessary to cope with a suddenly more adverse environment caused by the pandemic, but it is safe to assume that new collaborative relationships are far more difficult to generate in such conditions. A recent study analyzing the effects of the cancelation of the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in 2012 in the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac found that the likelihood of a conference participant’s co-authoring a publication with another participant decreased by 16% (Campos, Leon, & McQuillin, 2018). The authors’ expected conclud...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Trends in Published Comparative and International Education Research, 2014–2019, with a Focus on Open Access Journals and Global South Authors
• Part I. Comparative Education Trends and Directions
• Part II. Conceptual and Methodological Developments
• Part III. Research-to-Practice
• Part IV. Area Studies and Regional Developments
• Part V. New Developments in Comparative and International Education
• Index