Education, Value-system and Global (Dis)orders is the newest issue from Current Issues in Comparative Education, a Columbia Libraries Journal.

The following has been excerpted and lightly edited from the issue’s Editorial Introduction by Camille Fabo.

This special issue responds to an escalation of perceived turbulence in the global order and explores how education reflects these changes worldwide. Liberal norms are being called into question across the political spectrum; international organizations face growing backlash and major membership withdrawals; and forced displacement due to crises and conflicts has intensified. Against this backdrop, one may wonder whether the post-1945 liberal values diffusing through school systems and curricula across countries, simultaneously tasked with shaping national loyalty and producing international citizens committed to peace, still hold. While existing scholarship has demonstrated that local crises and tensions can hinder the enactment of liberal values in education reforms and curricula, it is worth questioning how global crises reshape national contexts. This question becomes especially pressing amid the political instrumentalization of immigration in public discourse worldwide, heightened tension in education aid through funding cuts, and schooling interruptions amid wars and crises.

This volume was intended to gather contributions that reflect, empirically or theoretically, on the role of education in contexts of a contested global order, encompassing displacement, conflict, and challenges to liberal values. The pertinence of this special issue lies in the complementarity of its articles. Authors, mostly emerging scholars, often in collaboration with more established researchers and practitioners, bring together reflections on the role of education in contexts of immigration, emergencies, and national-identity building, examining how schools navigate international frameworks, national boundaries of belonging, and cultural embeddedness. These pieces pose questions at philosophical, ethical, and practical levels, allowing us to interrogate the core purpose of education at the moments of its greatest challenge.

Read this new, special issue here, and learn more about the Columbia Libraries Journal program here.

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