An unfortunate consequence of the restructuring of teacher education in South Africa over the past 15 years has been the virtual disappearance of history of education from tertiary programmes and a corresponding decline in the number of publications on the subject. But this is now changing; especially in postgraduate courses. A history of schooling in South Africa: method and context provides a perspective on the development of schooling for all of South Africa's diverse population groups, from pre-colonial times to present day, in as much detail as is possible in a single volume.

Education has been dramatically reformed worldwide over the last few decades. In this age of globalisation, student teachers, education students and scholars of the social sciences in general need to take careful note of these changes. Comparative education - education systems and contemporary issues contains separate chapters in which a selection of education systems - South Africa, Botswana, the United States, Australia and India, as well as the emerging education dispensation of the European Union - are discussed. The other chapters of the title deal with issues in education - values and ideologies in education, cultural diversity, gender issues, higher education, curricular reform and violence in schools. The title commences with an outline of the historical evolution of comparative education and its significance.

Comparative and International Education is a dynamic and growing field facing extraordinary challenges in every corner of the world. World Education Patterns in the Global North surveys the educational responses and new educational landscapes being developed as a consequence of powerful global forces demanding change within the Global North's educational contexts, including North America, Central and South-East Europe, and East Asia, These forces include the ecological crisis, the population explosion, the changing nature of work, the rise of knowledge economies, economic internationalism, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the technology revolution, changing social relations, the empowerment of minority interest groups, the rise of multicultural societies, the diminishing stature of the nation-state, and the rise of supra-national and international political structures.

Comparative and International Education is a dynamic and growing field facing extraordinary challenges in every corner of the world. World Education Patterns in the Global South surveys the educational responses and new educational landscapes being developed as a consequence of the powerful global forces that are demanding change within the Global South's educational contexts, including Central and South-East Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean,. These forces include urbanisation in the Global South, the rise of the informal economic sector in the Global South, the changing presence of religion, the Creed of Human Rights, democratisation, and the rise of supranational and international political structures on the one hand and, on the other, sub-national and decentralised structures.

The global education revolution of the 20th century resulted in massive developments in education worldwide, but the higher education sector throughout Africa remains surprisingly underdeveloped. Although impressive expansion and reform of higher education in Africa have occurred since 1990, the higher education sector across Africa has been particularly challenged to keep pace with the development of higher education worldwide. This is reflected in comparatively limited research output by African university scholars and researchers and the limited representation of African universities on world institutional rankings. Given both the perceived and real gap in research productivity and scholarly reputation between African higher education and higher education systems in other parts of the world, the question persists whether or not the African higher education sector can produce "world-class" universities.

The scope and breadth of the field of comparative and international education is vast. In fact, there are few, if any, limitations on theme, method, or data in the field of comparative and international education. Every context or combination of contexts are available for comparative education scholars to scrutinise. The scope of this field brings both serious interest but also great challenges. This book explores the evolution and current state of the scholarly field of comparative and international education over 200 years of development. Experts in the field explore comparative and international education in each of the major world regions including Latin America, North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East-North Africa, Oceania, South Asia, South-East and East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Illuminating studies conducted in the fields of higher education, teacher education, vocational education, and peace education shed light on the rise of global testing culture and take a closer look at the history of the region in relation to educational practice. This important text is the first to respond to the challenges currently facing comparative education on a multi-national scale and will prove invaluable for researchers in the field of global education.

In 1994, South Africa's image in the world changed instantaneously from the polecat to that of being a model. The intensity of the societal conflict in the run-up to 1994, and the nature of the post-1994 societal reconstruction focused the attention of the whole world on South Africa. The societal changes have been of a social, economic, political and educational nature; the foundation of which had been laid by a Constitution and a Bill of Human Rights widely hailed as one of the most progressive in the world. After almost two decades, the time is ripe for an assessment. This book offers nine essays written by scholars who are recognised authorities in their fields of expertise, critically surveying some aspects of that societal reconstruction project.