International and Comparative Education Commons^™

Reflexive Accounts Of Conducting Qualitative Interviews In The Mena Region, Chaima Mennai, Sana Alzahrani

The Qualitative Report

This paper provides a reflexive account of our experiences conducting qualitative research in the contexts of two Arab countries, from our perspectives as researchers trained in a Western academic context. We explore the challenges and insights gained when recruiting and interviewing participants for qualitative Ph.D. projects within what is a predominantly quantitative research culture. Drawing on Walsh’s reflexive framework, we detail the issues that emerged during the recruitment and interview processes, identifying their potentially significant implications for Ph.D. candidates and early-career researchers who were trained in the West and are choosing to conduct research in contexts where the qualitative research …

Reading With Dad: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Fathers’ Literacy Practices In China And The United States, Wei Gu

Michigan Reading Journal

Family literacy research has often centered on mothers, with fathers’ roles receiving comparatively less attention, particularly in studies that examine family literacy across cultural contexts. This study, comparing the literacy practices of fathers with young children in China and the United States, explores cultural patterns of paternal family literacy engagement. The article reveals the relationship between father and child demographic characteristics (age, education, income, child age, number of children, and child gender) and fathers’ literacy involvement in two countries. Using a survey instrument administered to 500 fathers (250 in the United States and 250 in China), the study analyzes fathers’ …

Arts-Based Experiential Learning And Human Flourishing: A Perma-Informed Case Study Of Community Mural Making, Lindsay A. Beddes, Karen Yescavage, Krista Bridgmon

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

The worsening mental health epidemic among college students is marked by significant risk for loneliness, anxiety, and depression. Given that the demand for mental health care is outpacing institutional capacity, creative solutions are needed to augment traditional reactive interventions. In this qualitative research, we used narrative case study to explore the transformative power of community mural-making as experiential learning. Drawing on Seligman’s PERMA model (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment) we investigated how creative expression can cultivate positive psychological states to help students flourish (1991; 2011; 2018). Mural making promotes the crucial skills of teamwork, communication, and problem-solving. Outdoor public …

Principles, Frameworks And Challenges Underpinning Holistic Education In The 21st Century, Kumar Laxman

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Holistic education is an educational paradigm that is gaining increasing attention in educational circles due to it being eclectic and inclusive in nature. It attempts to embed a wholesome approach to life including spiritual and philosophical ideals in its pedagogical elements to foster a more fulsome development of the individual. In this paper, research literature is parsed through and content analysed to gain a deeper understanding of the historical and curricular underpinnings of the holistic education movement through a theoretical interpretive lens. The beginnings and evolution of the holistic education movement are examined in conjunction with the broad definitions of …

Understanding Students’ Perceptions Of Sustainability And Social Media Utility For Sustainability Communication: Evidence From Malaysia And Thailand, Mohamad Saifudin Mohamad Saleh, Miao Huang, Ali Mehellou, Teerada Chongkolrattanaporn

Higher Learning Research Communications

Social media has become an increasingly prominent platform for information dissemination among university students. This exploratory qualitative study explored Malaysian and Thai communication university students’ perspectives on the importance of social media and students’ role in learning about sustainability communication. A face-to-face focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted with 18 seniors who were majoring in communication at the School of Communication of Universiti Sains Malaysia and the faculty of Communication Arts of Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. The results showed that most respondents understood the concept of sustainability communication and its importance to the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Respondents also discussed the …

(Re)Writing The Narrative: Study Abroad In Ghana As A Catalyst To (Re)Frame Black Education, Amira Nash, Monique Cottman, Corey Breiten

Occasional Paper Series

Three Black educators including one instructor, one preservice teacher, and one inservice educator, highlight their experiences participating in a study abroad program in Ghana. Each author shares their personal narrative as a Black educator in a predominantly white educational context in the U.S. Midwest participating in the Ghana study abroad program. For Authors 2 and 3, their first visit to the continent of Africa, reflecting on these experiences through the lens of (re)membering in education. We conclude with a discussion highlighting how these experiences inform and strengthen our collective efforts towards reimagining educational equity in our local community.

Lessons From Media Narratives About Displaced Students In Higher Education, Lisa Ruth Brunner

Critical Internationalization Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Where Do We Go From Here? A Future Research Agenda For Ai In Education, Ejike Okonkwo

Essays in Education

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping education, creating new possibilities for teaching, learning, assessment, and professional development. This review synthesizes thirteen articles from the 2026 AI special issue of Essays in Education to identify common themes and tensions, with particular attention to evidence gaps surrounding these developments. As a selected collection of perspectives and educational contexts, the special issue provides insight into emerging areas of AI-related educational practice rather than a comprehensive account of the field. The interconnected issues that emerge include pedagogical integration and human agency, cognitive development and learning, AI literacy, ethics and equity, and institutional alignment. …

A Systematic Review Of Cipp Model Implementation In Educational Program Evaluation: A Comparative Study Of Türkiye And Indonesia, Zahid Zufar At Thaariq, Memet Karakuş, Fatma Altun

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: This study compares CIPP (context, input, process, product) evaluation model implementation in educational programs across Türkiye (Turkey) and Indonesia through a systematic literature review. Despite structural similarities as Muslim-majority countries, no comparative research has examined how national contexts shape CIPP application in both settings.

Methods: Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a Scopus search yielded 25 empirical studies (seven from Türkiye and 18 from Indonesia) analyzed using directed content analysis and comparative methods.

Results: Findings reveal two contrasting national patterns: (1) Türkiye’s “systematic formalism,” characterized by structured processes, standardized methodologies, and European Union policy …

Afterword: Reimagining Higher Education Internationalization As A Practice Of Racial Justice, Louise Michelle Vital, Jing Yu, Benjamin Denga

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This afterword reflects on the two-part special issue, “Examining Race, Racism, and Racialization in the Internationalization of Higher Education from Global Perspectives,” published in the Summer 2026 edition of the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education. Bringing together twenty-nine contributions, the issue centers race as foundational to how higher education internationalization is imagined, organized, practiced, and contested across global contexts. The afterword synthesizes key insights across both volumes, showing how internationalization is shaped by colonial histories, geopolitical inequalities, market logics, legal regimes, linguistic hierarchies, and racialized structures of belonging. Contributors challenge celebratory and neutral accounts of global engagement …

Selected Others In A Non-Western Host: Racialized Governance Of Southeast Asian Students In Taiwan’S Technical And Vocational Higher Education Under The New Southbound Policy, Chia-Ming Hsueh

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This article examines how Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy constructs and governs Southeast Asian students within higher education internationalization. Drawing on critical discourse and policy analysis of public policy documents, institutional materials, recruitment discourse, and related media sources from 2016 to 2024, the study argues that Southeast Asian students are positioned as “selected others”: welcomed as regional partners and future talent while also subject to differentiated forms of linguistic, administrative, and labor-oriented governance. Focusing particularly on Taiwan’s technical and vocational higher education sector, the analysis identifies three interrelated dynamics: selective inclusion by nationality and educational track, Mandarin as a technology of …

Advancing Equity Through Mentorship: Supporting Racialized Immigrant And International Students In Canadian Higher Education, Cecilia Bukutu Phd, Viola Manokore Dr, Michael Safo Ofori

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Mentorship initiatives have increasingly supported racialized students in Canada, yet gaps remain in addressing their intersectional needs. This study examines the experiences of Black postsecondary immigrant, refugee, and international students in the Mentorship and Resilience Project (MRP), a racially concordant mentorship initiative. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, data were drawn from interviews, focus groups, and post-workshop surveys. Guided by Anti-Black Racism and Intersectionality frameworks, the study explores how institutional diversity discourses may operate as non-performative practices that obscure structural inequities. Findings show students faced intersecting challenges related to migration status, race, and gender, marked by tensions between invisibility and hypervisibility. …

‘Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind’: Refugee Students And Internationalization Practices In Canadian Higher Education Institutions, Zuhra Abawi, Nidhi Menon

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

As of 2024, over 123 million people have been forcibly displaced due to war, persecution, climate catastrophe, and geopolitical instability. Among them, young people constitute a significant portion, many of whom aspire to rebuild their lives through higher education. Canada, a top destination for refugee resettlement, remains deeply inequitable for refugee access to postsecondary education. Although lauded for its commitments to diversity and inclusion, Canadian settler-colonial hierarchies and racialized politics of belonging continue to shape which displaced bodies are seen as deserving of education, opportunity, and protection. These dynamics underscore how forced migration, race, and higher education intersect within the …

Lost In Translation: How Higher Education Studies Conflates Latinx And International Latin American Experiences Through Misplaced Racialization, Eduardo Santander

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This autoethnographic study examines how higher education studies conflates international Latin American and domestic Latinx student experiences through what I term “misplaced racialization”, namely, the imposition of domestic racial categories onto international students that fundamentally misrecognizes their distinct positioning as temporary residents, adult-onset racialization subjects, and transnational knowledge holders. Colonial logics are not merely structural; they breathe through the field’s racial grammars. Drawing on Fricker’s (2007) hermeneutical injustice, I argue that higher education’s epistemological boundedness, its lack of native theory and reliance on borrowed American frameworks, does not merely contain colonial logics but is constituted by them, rendering those logics …

Seeing Through Indigenous Eyes: Language, Humility, And The Possibilities Of International Research, Janine E. Metallic

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This essay critically examines the internationalization of higher education through Indigenous epistemologies, asking: What might international research look like if guided by Indigenous values such as language, humility, and relationality? Drawing on Indigenous research methodologies and autoethnographic reflection, the essay explores how global academic norms, rooted in colonial legacies, often marginalize Indigenous ways of knowing. Theoretical constructs from Wilson (2008), Kovach (2021), and Smith (2021) inform the analysis, emphasizing relational accountability and ethical engagement. The discussion highlights that Indigenous language situates knowledge in place, humility resists prestige-driven scholarship, and relationality redefines research as reciprocal and community-centered. These insights challenge dominant …

Centering Positionality In Pursuit Of Combating Anti-Blackness In Study Abroad Via Intentional Pedagogical Design, Reka C. Barton, Taylor Woodman

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

In an attempt to address historical legacies entrenched in global learning, this case study (Yin, 2009) disrupts the white-centered norm of study abroad through intentional design and diversity of student participation. This study explores the question, In what ways did these design elements interrogate and/or disrupt occurrences of anti-Blackness? To answer this question, our case study site utilizes a long-standing graduate student study abroad fieldwork program in Cuba that explicitly discusses elements of race, identity, and nationality, with an emphasis on the unique and complex histories of manifestations of race in Cuba and the United States. This project interrogated how …

Mashin’ Up Stratified Blackness: Unpacking The Communal Responsibility Of Black International/Immigrant Academics To Black American Academics, Candice Peters, Abigail Smith

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Our duoethnographic inquiry, grounded in Intersectionality, addresses the following questions: How do intersectionality and internationalization complicate Black diasporic dynamics within the United States? What communal responsibilities do Black international/immigrant people hold toward Black American people within the U.S. academy? Through critical engagement with three previously published poems, we foreground the communal responsibility that arises at the hands of internationalization and unpack the intertwined realities of anti-Blackness, racialized hierarchies, and diasporic dynamics. Our findings unmask three themes: (1) evolving understandings of race across transnational contexts, (2) Black intraracial stratification, and (3) taking up responsibility. We conclude by urging a (re)commitment to …

The Myth Of Familiarity: Racialization & Intra-Faith Marginalization In Malaysian Islamic Higher Education, Rangga T. Nugraha

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This article examines how intra-faith marginalization operates within South–South international student mobility, challenging the assumption that shared religion and linguistic proximity facilitate belonging. Drawing on an autoethnographic study of an Indonesian Muslim scholarship student in Malaysian Islamic higher education, the analysis introduces the myth of familiarity as a critical conceptual framing, describing how shared religious or cultural identity may produce more granular hierarchies of legitimacy, thereby contradicting the belief that similarity guarantees inclusion. Using neo-racism and symbolic violence, three narrative vignettes illustrate how hierarchies of piety, nationality, and class are enacted and normalized within a shared Islamic context. The findings …

Settler-Colonial Entanglements: Using Par/Des(I) To Understand Black And Racialized International Student Experiences In Canada, Abu Arif

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

This scholarly paper discusses the complex positioning of Black and Racialized international students (BRIS) in Canada, both as marginalized bodies and complicit in perpetuating settler colonialism. It delves into the paradoxical role these students play within the framework of Canadian higher education, which is deeply entwined with the country's colonial history and contemporary policy shifts aimed at managing the influx of international students. The Par/Des(i) decolonial research framework offers a pathway for understanding how BRIS are entangled within settler colonial structures, free from the limitations of the western gaze. The framework guides scholars toward recognizing hybridized ways of being and …

Critical Race Theory And Refugeecrit: A Reflective Account On Understanding The Structural Racism And Power Asymmetries Faced By Afghan Refugee Students In Universities In Delhi, Akanksha Dochania Dr

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Using Critical Race Theory and RefugeeCrit, this study examines structural racism and power asymmetries facing Afghan refugee students in Delhi universities. Drawing on eighteen in-depth interviews, analysis reveals four interconnected themes: (1) invisibility/hypervisibility paradoxes—students are academically voiceless yet constantly surveilled; (2) epistemic inequality—their trauma is extracted while intellectual contributions are dismissed; (3) pedagogical microaggressions—deficit assumptions erode confidence; and (4) institutional gatekeeping—documentation barriers perpetuate marginalization. Findings show that access-oriented policies are insufficient, as neutral-sounding rules reinforce systemic hierarchies. Reflexive thematic analysis underscores researcher positionality in meaning-making. The study expands CRT and RefugeeCrit within the Indian context, urging faculty training, curricular inclusion …