Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Purposes, Policies, and Practices in Education. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education

Overview & Synopsis

This volume revisits the book edited by David Phillips and Michael Kaser in 1992, entitled "Education and Economic Change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union" (https://doi.org/10.15730/books.42). Two and a half decades later, this volume reflects on how post-socialist countries have engaged with what Phillips and Kaser called 'the flush of educational freedom.' Spanning diverse geopolitical settings that range from Southeast and Central Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia, the chapters in this volume offer analyses of education policies and practices that the countries in this region have pursued since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This book explores three interrelated questions. First, it seeks to capture complex reconfigurations of education purposes during post-socialist transformations, noting the emergence of neoliberal education imaginaries in post-socialist spaces and their effects on policy discussions about education quality and equity across the region. Second, it examines the ongoing tensions inherent in post-socialist transformations, suggesting that beneath the surface of dominant neoliberal narratives there are always powerful countercurrents -- ranging from the persisting socialist legacies to other alternative conceptualizations of education futures -- highlighting the diverse trajectories of post-socialist education transformations. And finally, the book engages with the question of 'comparison,' prompting both the contributing authors and readers to reflect on how research on post-socialist education transformations can contribute to rethinking comparative methods in education across space and time. This book contains the following chapters: (1) Reconfiguring Education Purposes, Policies and Practices during Post-Socialist Transformations: Setting the Stage (Maia Chankseliani and Iveta Silova); (2) Transnational Policy Borrowing and National Interpretations of Educational Quality in Russia, China and Brazil (Elena Minina, Nelli Piattoeva, Vera G. Centeno, Xingguo Zhou, and Helena Hinke Dobrochinski Candido); (3) Constructing the European Citizen: The Origins and the Development of the Serbian Post-2000 Civic Education Discourse (Sanja Djerasimovic); (4) Introduction of the Per Capita Funding Model of Finance in the Post-Soviet Countries: The Cases of Latvia and Georgia (Simon Janashia); (5) Post-Socialist Transformations, Everyday School Life and Country Performance in PISA: Analysis of Curriculum Education Reform in Latvia and Estonia (Tatiana Khavenson); (6) Good Intentions Cast Long Shadows: Donors, Governments and Education Reform in Armenia and Ukraine (Mihaylo Milovanovitch and Kate Lapham); (7) Emerging Global Players? Building International Legitimacy in Universities in Estonia and Kazakhstan (Merli Tamtik and Emma Sabzalieva); (8) Bottom Up and Top Down: Comparing Language-in-Education Policy in Ukraine and Kazakhstan (Bridget A. Goodman and Laura Karabassova); (9) Nation and Gender in Post-Socialist Education Transformations: Comparing Early Literacy Textbooks in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Latvia (Garine Palandjian, Iveta Silova, Olga Mun, and Rakhat Zholdoshalieva); and (10) Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations: Dead Ends, New Pathways and Unexpected Openings (Iveta Silova).