The Global Education Policy Field: Theorization and Problematization
This book challenges conventional approaches to global education policy (GEP) by exploring its often-overlooked onto-epistemic and religio-spiritual dimensions. Through eight thought-provoking chapters, leading scholars critically examine how fundamental questions of knowing, being, and worldview shape the field’s theoretical foundations and practical implications.
The contributors delve deep into the Western modernist assumptions that underpin global education policy. From Vietnam’s educational exchange with Mozambique to Christian normativity in higher education, the chapters offer diverse perspectives on how colonial legacies, religious frameworks, and philosophical traditions continue to influence educational policy and practice worldwide.
The book makes a vital contribution by:
• Interrogating the Western-centric nature of GEP scholarship
• Exploring alternative epistemological and ontological frameworks
• Examining the intersection of rationalized bureaucracy with ritual governance
• Investigating transnational academic mobility in relation to the notion of multiple selves
This volume is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand the deeper structures and assumptions that shape global education policy. By bringing together perspectives from comparative education, philosophy, and critical theory, it opens new pathways for reimagining the field beyond its current theoretical and methodological boundaries. It was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The global education policy field: theorization and problematization, D. Brent Edwards Jr
2. The racial grammar of development: a critical narrative inquiry of Vietnam’s educational exchange program with Mozambique, Hang M. Le
3. Developmentalism as colonial residue: historicising the onto-epistemic foundations of the global education policy field, Christopher Kirchgasler
4. Unthinking critique: when will ‘critical’ global education policy scholarship emerge from Marx’s shadow? Jeremy Rappleye
5. Christian normativity in global higher education policy and practice, Sachi Edwards
6. Ritual governance, rationalized bureaucracy, and ‘failure’: the religio-spiritual dimension of global education policy, D. Brent Edwards Jr.
7. Ethnophilosophy as intellectual resource: self-reflective inquiry into the onto-epistemic foundations of global education policy research, Oshie Nishimura-Sahi
8. An invitation to an interdependent mode of academic engagement in comparative and global education studies: a response to Edward Vickers’ criticism, Keita Takayama
9. Transnational academic mobility and knowledge production: learning and being differently in the global education policy field through multiple selves, Phan Le Ha
About the Author
D. Brent Edwards Jr is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Education. His work focuses on the global governance of education and global education policies from critical and decolonial perspectives.
