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Abstract A global push exists to bolster the connections between research and practice in education. However, fostering evidence-informed practice (EIP) has proven challenging. Indeed, this ‘problem’ requires simultaneously attending to multiple aspects/levels of education systems, and to the contexts within which they reside. As such, comparative analyses using systems approaches hold potential for achieving context-specific insights regarding how to foster EIP. However, such analyses have been scarce, and what research does exist has generally been limited relative to methods and theory. Given this, the present study executes and describes/reflects upon a novel approach for analysing and comparing EIP in/across systems. In this study, educators’ evidence use patterns are described and comparatively analysed, using a sample of four regions within high-income national settings: Catalonia (Spain), England (UK), Massachusetts (USA), and Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany). This study employs a dual analytical frame (a cohesion/regulation matrix and institutional theory) to supply a methodological lens through which to understand EIP within and across these four systems. Together, this approach not only provides a way of accounting for the macro-level differences between contexts, it also enables a comparison of meso-level and micro-level factors (via institutional theory) that might be common and distinct across systems. This study’s findings reveal substantial diversity in the extent and nature of evidence use between systems, which in turn patterned according to distinctive cultural, systemic, and institutional features. Considering these findings, this study’s discussion advances some provisional insights and reflections regarding actual and potential EIP in education. For example, variability relative to the types/extents of accountability pressures, and how this affected educators’ data and evidence use, enabled a discussion holding relevance for policymakers. We also share process-related insights—i.e., describing the advances and challenges we experienced while undertaking this new approach. These points hold relevance for colleagues wishing to emulate and improve upon the efforts described herein, which we argue are applicable both in and beyond the education sector. Relative to education, these approaches can be applied and improved with an eye toward developing context-specific (vs. one-size-fits-all) packages for fostering EIP and, ultimately, achieving high quality and progressively improving schools/systems.

In the past two decades, the Government of Pakistan has significantly invested in higher education (HE) to bring structural reforms in funding, governance, and quality assurance mechanisms. Their overarching mission has been to fuel national socioeconomic development by ensuring equal access to HE. Given this, the present study aimed to address the following research question: To what extent have current HE reforms in Pakistan enabled equitable access to HE? To address this question, this study drew from a social justice-centered framework to track trends in HE access that is, broadly and based on socio-economic status, gender, urbanicity/rurality, and region/province. Using secondary data from diverse sources including the HEC, Academy of Education Planning and Management, and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, we conducted descriptive longitudinal analyses. Findings underscore that the system has failed to provide equal access to HE in several ways and discuss some possibilities for policymakers in equalizing the opportunities.

Globalization of education is widely contested in the current academic discussion due to its polarizing effects on the economy, society, and culture. Globalization and colonization have several commonalities because the origin of globalization can be traced to the colonial era. The privatization of education has also emerged with globalization. Applying a post-colonial critique and analysis, this paper will discuss how globalization is a colonial legacy that transforms Western educational policies in developing countries like Pakistan and how it creates Westernization, supremacy, and marginalization of teachers and students (Spring, 2008). Pakistan was formerly the colonized region of united India under Great Britain's empire. Globalization in education policies are rapidly changing the current educational landscape in several countries including Pakistan. The advancement of global forces enhanced standardization and privatization in the education system of Pakistan which has increased educational inequity along with the loss of indigenous language and culture. The post-colonial and indigenous scholarship in education will offer better frameworks of equitable access to quality education for all.

In many nations around the globe, including Pakistan, education is losing ground as a public good to become another market-based commodity as the state shrinks its responsibility to schooling. This presents challenges to democratic futures, and particularly for young democratic states such as Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is pouring a significant amount of money into the private provision of education, encouraged by the policies and investments of international donor-partners such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. These changes in educational provision represent the impacts of neoliberalism and globalisation on Pakistani policymaking and the growing influence of the conceptualisation of education as a private commodity. To address these trends, we offer a normative philosophical framework for a conception of education as a critical public good in Pakistan, drawing on Islamic tradition, public good theory, human rights, and common good global education theories.