Key education and quality issues and reassessments coming from the developing world

Abstract

I am pleased to introduce this present issue of Prospects: the first non-thematic collection of peer-reviewed articles that we are publishing in 2013. We continue to seek strong general-interest submissions by researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners alike, on topics of crucial importance to the field of comparative education. While maintaining the journal’s very distinctive profile, substance, and identity, we also continue our earnest efforts to publish the very best in education research, theory and practice, coming from various geographical regions, with a special focus on curriculum-related issues. In this issue, we showcase research pertaining to several topics that lie at the heart of contemporary educational research and policy: education quality, access to education, indigenous education, motivation, class management, school-based management, world-class education, and rural education. Most importantly, these studies offer ways to reinterpret and adapt theory to the needs and contexts of the international and developing world. The geographical coverage of the articles is notable and includes countries as diverse as Australia, Bangladesh, Chile, China, Guatemala, Hungary, Israel, and Pakistan. The issue opens with a controversial Viewpoint, authored by Helen Abadzi, a leading psychologist who has worked for over 25 years as an education specialist and senior evaluation officer in the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education. Her article is a foray into a largely unexplored phenomenon: the decision-making processes of schoolbased management committees in low-income countries. Committees of low-income populations may lack the time and resources, as well as experience with quality schools, to accurately evaluate service delivery. She suggests developing links between two groups— the donor community and governments, and the neuropsychologists and experts in artificial intelligence who study decision-making—in order to better understand the routes from management committee decisions to service delivery and to help improve services to lowincome populations. Zsuzsa Millei and Robert J. Imre examine early childhood education in Hungary between 1948 and 1989. They argue that the socialist kindergarten in Hungary was set up