International and Comparative Education Commons^™

Pisa In Brief Australia 2025: Student Performance, Lisa De Bortoli, Catherine Underwood

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

PISA in Brief summarises the key findings from PISA 2025 for Australian students. It compares Australia’s performance with other participating countries and economies, examines trends over time, and highlights differences in achievement across Australian states and territories and key demographic groups. PISA uses 2 main measures to describe student achievement. Mean scores show overall performance, while proficiency levels (ranging from below Level 1 to Level 6) explain the types of knowledge and skills students can typically demonstrate. This report focuses on differences that are statistically significant (in other words, differences that are unlikely to have occurred by chance). The report …

Pisa 2025: A First Look At Student And School Characteristics For Australia, Lisa De Bortoli, Catherine Underwood

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

This report presents a first overview of Australia’s PISA 2025 contextual results. It focuses on selected constructs related to 15-year-old students’ attitudes towards school and their experiences in the classroom and at school, including sense of belonging at school, disciplinary climate in science classes, perseverance, feeling safe at school, enjoyment of science, exposure to bullying, negative school climate, and time spent on digital devices by purpose. It also provides initial insights into equity in education in Australia from an international perspective, and Australian students’ self-reported effort. The report compares Australia’s results with those of other participating countries and economies, as …

Pisa 2025: Reporting Australia's Results. Volume I: Student Performance, Lisa De Bortoli, Catherine Underwood, Jonas Bertling

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

This Volume I report presents Australia’s PISA 2025 results at the international and national level, including results for key student groups. It examines recent trends since PISA 2022 and longer-term trends since reading (2000), mathematics (2003) and science (2006) were first assessed as the focal domains. The results in this report are based on a nationally representative sample of Australian 15-year-old students, stratified using variables of jurisdiction; school sector; geographic location; student sex composition; and a measure of socioeconomic background.

Advancing A Familial Understanding Of International Students, Prof-Collins Ifeonu Dr

Critical Internationalization Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom Dreamers In Oakland, California: A Portraiture Of Creating Spatial Justice And Repair, Rebecca Sarah Jacquez

Doctoral Dissertations

Oakland, California, is a unique site of residents who have historically questioned the status quo and are currently continuing that legacy by creating spatial justice and repair in the midst of anti-Blackness and the afterlife of racial segregation. This dissertation spotlights a portrait of Oakland, California, that uplifts the lived experiences of folks who are using a ‘radical imagination’ to build ‘freedom as a place.’ This qualitative study aims to extend the literature of reparative spatial justice in education by sharing the nuances of a particular radical imagination rooted in freedom that one can feel in Oakland. Using portraiture methodology, …

Geopoetics: Expanding The Philosophy Of Teacher Education, Linda M. Craig Dr

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Amidst our accelerating ecological crisis, this essay argues for a fundamental reimagining of teacher education through Kenneth White's theory of geopoetics. Drawing on complexity science and Whitehead's process philosophy, I trace a paradigm shift from mechanistic models of education - characterised by fixed knowledge transmission and neoliberal performativity - toward a relational, orientation grounded in emergence and becoming. Geopoetics offers a transdisciplinary framework that dissolves boundaries between science, poetry, philosophy, and spirituality, positioning education not as content delivery but as participation in the creative unfolding of life. Through an exploration of Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain as geopoetic spiritual practice. …

Poetry As Liminal Inquiry: Illuminating Complexity, Mysticism, And Embodied Knowing, Vicki Boley Dr.

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper explores poetry as a form of liminal inquiry, positioning poetic practice as an embodied, intuitive, and relational mode of meaning-making within the complexity of teaching and learning. Drawing on a reflective collection of poems written during a doctoral course on Mysticism and Activism in Education, the author revisits this work from a current perspective as an educator and scholar, using complexity theory to understand both the poetic process and classroom learning as nonlinear, emergent, and relational systems. Rather than yielding to linear thinking or single answers, the paper argues that poetic inquiry mirrors how insight develops in complex …

Can One Learn From Dreams?, Anastasia Lavrenyuk

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This reflective essay explores the educational significance of dream-based and intuitive knowledge through the lens of a field experience in the Peruvian Amazon. While participating in a course on sustainability and Indigenous knowledge, I encountered a member of the Ese Eja community who described how medicinal plant wisdom once came through dreams—through spiritual connection with the forest. This moment prompted a personal and scholarly inquiry into how non-rational, subjective ways of knowing have historically shaped both scientific and cultural breakthroughs, from the structure of chemical element benzene to Indigenous learning systems. Drawing on examples from physics, neuroscience, and Indigenous epistemologies, …

In The Problem Lies The Solution: How Digital Mindfulness Can Address The College Students’ Mental Health Crisis And Support Holistic Education, Steve Haberlin

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

The mental health of today’s college students remains a serious concern. The alarming trend of greater psychological distress among undergraduates shows no signs of slowing. Excessive smartphone usage, screen time, and social media have been attributed as partial factors. However, what if forms of digital mindfulness and technology-assisted contemplative practices are the key to assisting students with stress, anxiety, depression and other problems? In this article, the author posits that innovations, such as neurofeedback-loop meditation platforms that dramatically increase focus, virtual reality platforms featuring in depth-meditation instruction, and Artificial Intelligence have the potential to address the crisis, establishing a refreshed …

International Students And Spiritual Capital: Meditation As A Tool To Support Student Well-Being, Anna Grigoreva, Anna Lytkina

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In a new academic environment, international students often face more than just academic challenges, as they also navigate cultural adjustment, identity shifts, digital overload and emotional stress. These multidimensional challenges are further intensified by performance pressures and rapidly evolving educational technologies. This article explores the role of meditation as a contemplative practice that may support international students’ adaptation within the American higher education system. The article focuses on how international students draw upon inner strength, purpose, and resilience to navigate and sustain themselves through periods of transition and difficulty. Using autoethnography as a primary methodological approach, the authors analyze their …

Nurturing The Spiritual Core In Teachers Within The Nexus Of Science And Spirituality, Sarina C. Molina

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This reflective essay explores the intersection of science and spirituality in nurturing teachers’ inner lives as a foundation for supporting student well-being. Against the backdrop of a global mental health crisis, it integrates insights from neuroscience, Indigenous wisdom traditions, and values-based education to advocate for a holistic mind–body–nature connection. Emerging research on neuroplasticity, heart–brain coherence, and self-transcendence has shown the physiological and psychological benefits of spiritual cultivation for educators. Drawing on Indigenous epistemologies, this essay highlights contemplative and heart-centered practices that foster self-transformation, resilience, and authentic relationality. Practical applications for teacher education, curriculum design, and community engagement illustrate how spiritual …

The Calculus Of Difference: Pluralism And Integration Through Education In India, Deepa Srikantaiah

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper introduces a calculus-based conceptual framework to examine how India sustains pluralistic integration across its extraordinary religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity. Drawing on mathematical principles of integration, continuity, and the Infinity Principle, the analysis demonstrates how social cohesion emerges from sustained attention to the infinitesimal: the localized communities, languages, and practices that constitute India's complex social fabric. The framework positions education as the primary integrative mechanism, functioning analogously to the mathematical process of integration by decomposing social complexity into comprehensible parts and reassembling them into collective understanding.

Through historical analysis spanning from the Indus Valley Civilization to contemporary India, …

Ancient Wisdom & Its Cultural Relevance: Reimagining Deeper Learning In Science Classrooms Through The Lens Of Yoga And Vedānta, Raaghav Pandya

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Contemporary calls to reconceptualize how science is taught and understood have brought deeper learning to the forefront of education at-large for its emphasis on critical perspectives, creativity, and student-centered inquiry. Yet this paper argues that its prevailing framework remains constrained by Cartesian dualism, a materialist foundation that disassociates the individual from self, other, and nature, and falls short of addressing the mental health, environmental, and cultural challenges facing youth today. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a complementary convergence between deeper learning and the contemplative traditions of Yoga and Vedānta, whose ancient paradigms of self-inquiry, interconnectedness, and well-being offer …

When Quantum Physics Meets Laozi, Jing Lin

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper explores the profound convergence between quantum physics and Laozi’s Daoist philosophy, proposing a quantum-Daoist cosmology as a transformative foundation for reimagining education. Drawing on core principles of quantum physics—such as wave-particle duality, entanglement, and the observer effect, and Laozi’s teachings on Dao and De, the paper argues for a cosmology in which reality is energetic, relational, and morally ordered. While quantum science reveals the unseen, interconnected nature of existence, Laozi advances this view by emphasizing the role of virtue as an energetic and ethical force that sustains the universe. The paper proposes that meditative practice and the cultivation …

Bridging The Abyss: Reclaiming Spirituality In Academic Knowledge Production, Neil Boland

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Over recent decades, Western academia has shown a growing interest in spirituality, accompanied by methodological innovations and epistemological expansion. Nevertheless, spiritual inquiry continues to be subtly subordinated to scientific rationalism, with Western science often presiding as gatekeeper over what is considered legitimate knowledge. Drawing on Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ concept of abyssal thinking, this article argues that spiritual and experiential forms of knowing remain largely relegated to the far side of an epistemic divide, valued only insofar as they can be reframed within scientific norms. Despite increasing institutional recognition of spirituality in fields such as education, psychology, and medicine, …

The Thousand Mysteries That Bind Us: The Multiverse As Spiritualverse And The Holism Of Mystery, Giovanni Rossini

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

While we exist historically within evolving worldviews, we live amid the paradoxical necessity of mystery; one shared by scientists and non-scientists, theologians and atheists, and artists and philosophers alike. A thousand mysteries bind us with their imperative presence. While pre modern astronomers pondered the mysterious randomness of the night sky, today our sense of cosmological awe is fuelled not only by its randomness, but by a new scientific theory that says multiple skies inhabit the creation. The multiverse — a thesis emerging from cosmological science, wherein parallel worlds are posited to coexist — augments mystery. In this paper, I explore …

Editors’ Introduction, Kathleen R. Kesson Dr., Susan H. Edgerton, Jing Lin

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This is the introduction to the Special Issue

Shared Equity Leadership In An Offshore Medical School: Distributing Responsibility For Equity, Vishal B. Surender, Sreekrishna Penna, Oluwabusola Osimosu

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This essay applies the Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) framework to an offshore MD program at a private Caribbean medical school where students complete basic sciences on an island and clinical clerkships across multiple international sites. Using SEL scholarship and de-identified institutional data, we ask how equity work is currently distributed, where gaps emerge in assessment, remediation, and mobility for historically underrepresented students in medicine, and how responsibility for equity might be more deliberately shared. The Woven model of SEL provides a lens to map existing structures like curriculum committees, CQI dashboards, advising systems, and clinical site partnerships. We propose a …

Reimagining Global Dei Through Adaptive Leadership: A Framework For Advancing Racial Equity In International Higher Education Partnerships, Briana C. Edwards

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Abstract

As internationalization in higher education expands through transnational research, global curricula, humanitarian training programs, and faculty mobility, discourses on diversity often remain Western-centered and detached from lived realities of structural inequity. This paper argues that adaptive leadership, grounded in mobilizing communities to confront systemic challenges in complex and uncertain environments, provides a useful pathway for rebuilding global DEI with racial equity at the center (Heifetz et al., 2009). Drawing from practice-based insight in global health, humanitarian workforce systems, HBCU models of global engagement, and higher education HR structures, the paper interrogates how colonial legacies, racial hierarchies, anti-DEI political climates, …

Knowledge Dilution And Tinted Pedagogical Dissemination: A Call For De-Colonizing Commercial Textbooks In Teacher Education For International Students, S. A. N. Zaidi, Cherian, F.V.

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how commercially produced textbooks mediate professor agency and shape the racialized and epistemic positioning of international students within a Canadian Teacher Education program. Situated within the internationalization of higher education, the study interrogates how textbook-driven curricular practices reproduce racial hierarchies, Eurocentric knowledge systems, and epistemic exclusion. The study responds to ongoing debates on race, racism, and racialization by examining how knowledge production and dissemination in classrooms may marginalize the lived experiences and intellectual contributions of international and racialized students. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and document analysis in programs serving racialized and international students. …

Resistance, Rebuttal And Risk: Exploring Black International Students’ Perceptions Of Racial Justice Organizing In Western Canada., Prof-Collins Ifeonu

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Based on 40 interviews, this study develops a three-fold typology that captures the heterogeneous nature of Black international students’ political engagement. Drawing on diasporic consciousness, I show how students negotiate their relationship to racial justice movements through race, ethnic identity, nationality, and temporary legal status. The findings underscore the need for a more nuanced understanding of Black students’ political subjectivities and brings attention to the incessant striving for personal belonging that these students undergo in their experiences of foreign study.

Contradiction And Critical Consciousness: Engaging Canadian University Students In Racial Dialogue On Anti-Chinese Racism, Dan Cui

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This study examines how Canadian university students perceived and engaged with anti-Chinese racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on grounded theory and interviews and written reflections from 28 undergraduates at a predominantly White university, the study analyzes students’ contradictory understandings of racism shaped by media, national narratives, and prior educational experiences. Informed by Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, it conceptualizes these tensions as a contradictory racialized habitus, in which awareness and denial, empathy and distancing, coexist. Three themes emerged: contradictory orientations toward anti-Chinese racism, the transnational influence of U.S. political discourse, and the limited transformative impact of a social justice course. …

Old Wine New Bottles: Racial Microaggressions Experiences Of Black African International Students In England, Solomon A. Zewolde

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Despite increasing attention to inequality in higher education, the everyday experiences of Black students and how they navigate racialized environments remain underexplored. This study examined Black African international undergraduates’ experiences of racial microaggression and their coping strategies in the context of higher education in England. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, a qualitative approach was used to analyze the accounts of 16 undergraduates studying in 11 English universities.  Findings indicate that students experienced racialized challenges along two interrelated dimensions: identity-based marginalization (including assumptions of poor/inferior previous education in Africa and pathologizing discourse) and social exclusion (including devaluation of classroom contributions, invisibility, …

The Prevalence And Landscape Of Accent Reduction Programs At Us Institutions Of Higher Education, Sandra Greene, Katie Hopkins, Melissa Whatley, Christina W Yao

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Many institutions offering accent reduction programs claim they help international staff and students modify their accent, thereby helping them be more successful within the context of higher education. Despite accent reduction programs being labeled as predatorial, deficit-laden, and pathologizing of accents, programs continue to proliferate on college campuses while perpetuating English language dominance, linguistic racism, and the hierarchization of Englishes. Yet, there is limited research on the scope of these programs within higher education. This descriptive study, informed by QuantCrit, adds to the existing literature by highlighting the landscape and characteristics of the approximately 9% of institutions of higher education …

Inter(Sectional)(National): Modeling Belonging And Campus Climate Among Asian International Students’ Identities, Yun-Han Weng, Ionell Jay Terogo, Laura S. Dahl

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

International students’ belonging in U.S. higher education is shaped by institutional climates that are both racialized and internationalized, yet few quantitative studies model these dimensions simultaneously. Using data from the Assessment of Collegiate Residential Environments and Outcomes, we examine how campus nationality and racial climates relate to Asian international students’ sense of belonging, and whether these relationships vary by intersecting identities. We examine how campus nationality and racial climates relate to Asian international students’ sense of belonging (n = 763). Measurement model comparisons empirically supported a two-factor solution separating nationality and racial climates once reverse-worded items were removed for improved …

“It’S Very Racialized And Very Politicized”: International Educators Recount The Campus And Local Climate For International Students, Amanda R. Corso, Gaurav Harshe, Chrystal George Mwangi, Christina W Yao

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

International educators have served as the primary support system for international students and are responsible for supporting international students through navigating racist encounters often without feeling adequately prepared (George Mwangi et al., 2025; Yao et al., 2019). With a diverse learning environment model as our framework, our study explored how international educators in the United States make sense of their racialized local and campus contexts, specifically in their work with international students. Using a three-dimensional approach to narrative inquiry, we interviewed 31 participants from New York, Massachusetts, California, and Michigan who worked in international student and scholar offices. Our findings …

Nice White Ladies: Exorcising The Ghost Of Lady Bountiful, Renee Lynch

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This article explores how individuals with racial privilege can both acknowledge and start to move beyond the ways they are implicated in systemic injustices in internationalization through collaboration. The study examines how the author acted in complicity with colonial power in an international collaborative research project in English language education at a university in Tanzania. Critical ethnographic data was analyzed using positioning theory and applying the archetype of Lady Bountiful - a “nice white lady” who graciously participates in the civilizing work of colonization. This construct illuminates how the author perpetuated colonialism at the intersection of whiteness and femininity while …

Not Quite Foreign, Never Fully Belonging: Racialization Of Southbound Policy Students In Taiwan, Garima Jha

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This paper critically examines how race and racialization shape the socio-cultural adjustment experiences of international students from New Southbound policy (NSP) countries in Taiwan. Drawing from a qualitative part conducted for my master’s thesis, which explored the coping strategies and adjustment processes of seven students from Southeast and South Asia through semi-structured interview, I reframe the data to center race as an analytical lens using the conceptual framework proposed by Glasgow (2009) which explains that racialization as the process through which social meanings are attached to perceived cultural or bodily differences, creating and maintaining hierarchies among groups. and Brondolo et …

Transnational Racialization: An Exploratory Case Study Of Asian International Students In U.S. Higher Education, Jia Zheng, Kristyn Lue

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This exploratory case study examines the transnational racialization experiences of 14 ethnically diverse Asian International Students (AIS) studying abroad in the U.S. Using International Student Critical Race Theory to foreground the contexts of participants’ home countries, we ask: What are AIS’s experiences with transnational racialization? Findings suggest that AIS are socialized to the racial dynamics of the U.S. through: (1) the different contexts of their home countries, (2) their specific social positioning within these contexts, (3) the influence of Western narratives across the globe, and (4) their academic communities in the U.S. Our findings advance theoretical perspectives on racialization in …

Resurrecting Anti-Apartheid Solidarity: Scholasticide, Race, And The Politics Of Internationalization In Higher Education, Divinia Jithoo, Alia Gilbrecht

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This paper interrogates how racialized internationalization and epistemic injustice shape global higher education through a comparative critical analysis of South African and Palestinian academic resistance. Drawing on decolonial theory (Du Plessis, 2021) and Fricker’s (2007) framework of epistemic injustice, we examine how scholasticide—the deliberate destruction of Palestinian educational institutions—reveals higher education as a targeted site of racialized domination rather than a neutral casualty of war. Our findings show that normalization, sustained through Global South partnerships with Israeli institutions, functions as a racialized mode of internationalization that obscures complicity in settler-colonial violence. These dynamics are reinforced by transnational anti-Palestinian racism, a …