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The world has become a space of flow due to globalization resulting from great strides in communication, transport, and the use of social media. This flow has gained impetus due to national borders becoming more permeable, leading to increased migration and social mobility. Apart from all the advantages that this new space might offer, it has brought with it a number of deplorable phenomena such as religious and cultural intolerance, discrimination, stereotyping, xenophobia, and violence. The core argument of this article is that although there is as yet no consensus about the definitions of citizenship and of global citizenship education (GCE), about the best theoretical positions to adopt in the current circumstances, and about the dimensions of the global flow, GCE curriculum designers, and citizenship educators in particular, are confronted with several challenges. These challenges include: how to ontically deal with the flow in terms of the ontic balance between permanence and change, and how to educate learners to become informed, critical, and conscientized citizens of their own nation-states while at the same time preparing them for drawing on the global flow as a pedagogical resource that will enable them to deal with the injustices in the world that might be associated with, caused, or highlighted by that flow. Five such challenges are outlined and suggestions offered about how to address them in these times of "glocal" flow.

The aim of this article is to investigate the authorship of Education research in Africa, within the framework of global Education research production. The negative effect of a low scholarly output in the global pool is explicated. The 2012 volumes of all Thomsons Reuter (previously called the ISI, or Institute for Scientific Information) indexed journals in the field of Education were taken as data pool. The authorship of the 18 523 articles published in this pool was studied. Africa contributed in total 395 authors, representing only 2.13 per cent of the author pool; but taken as a whole. The distributions of authors as per journal, per nations in Africa, and per sub-field of Education knowledge are analysed and recommendations for raising the profile of African scholars in the global circuit of publishing in the field of Education are made.

The aim of this study was to investigate the management of parental involvement in three multicultural schools in the Umlazi District in Durban, South Africa. A literature survey resulting in a theoretical framework on parental involvement in schools, multicultural schools, and the managing of parental involvement in schools has been done. The contextual background of schools in contemporary South Africa is depicted. A qualitative research design has been used. Focus group discussions have been conducted, with a total of thirty-three principals, teachers and parents. It has found that there is a low level of meaningful contact between school and parents. Apathy exists on the side of parents, low expectations on the side of principals and teachers, and an organisational structure facilitating parent-school interaction is lacking. In managing parental involvement in multicultural schools, school managers display a lack of intercultural sensitivity.

This article examines how education unfolded as a science in Estonia in the period 1944-1991, i.e. from the second Soviet occupation to the fall of the USSR. Historical analysis of the way prominent scholars and institutions succeeded in overcoming the adverse conditions of that period is conducted by viewing their respective contributions through two theoretical lenses: cultural trauma theory to explore the adversities they had to contend with, and resilience theory to explain how those challenges were overcome. Through these means an account is constructed of how individuals and institutions succeeded in preserving the national Estonian and inter-war European legacy of educational philosophy, in the process confronting and countering adverse socio-cultural-political conditions.

Comparative Education as a subject or course on teacher education curricula mainly continues to be taught in Ireland, some African and East European countries and a few colleges in Ireland, the UK and several universities in the USA, Canada, Western Europe, Latin America and Australia. This research compares Irish and South African students' experiences of their Comparative Education courses. The article commences with a survey of literature on the position of Comparative Education in teacher education, a portrayal of the contextual background of South Africa and of Ireland, and a brief synopsis of the pre-course survey of students' expectations, upon which this study builds. Subsequently the research method is explained and the results presented. Three findings emerged from this study. The first is the valuable role of Comparative Education in teacher education. The second is the role of contextual factors in determining the significance of Comparative Education in teacher education. Thirdly, the centrality of clients (i.e. students) is critical to the future of Comparative Education in teacher education. (Contains 4 tables.)

As part of a research project on religion, spirituality and education, the authors attended to the role that children's divine dreams could play in religious education (RE). They contend that such dreams can indeed be used by RE teachers as the gateway to understanding the spirituality of their learners. They defend their claim by firstly developing a conceptual-theoretical framework with respect to religion, spirituality and children's divine dreams, and then presenting the results of an explorative quantitative-qualitative investigation in three schools. They find their claim to have been vindicated, and suggest that although RE teachers should not necessarily teach divine dreams "per se," they should, nevertheless, explore the possibility that (at least some of) the contents of children's divine dreams may be useful for the purpose of teaching them RE "from" religion itself, rather than teaching them only "about" religion. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)

Background: The present era in history is characterised by a set of forceful global societal trends. These include the ecological crisis, the population explosion and seismic demographic shifts, staggering technological progress, economic trends (growing affluence, the neo-liberal economic revolution), social trends (declining importance of primary and secondary social groupings and growing importance of tertiary social groupings), political trends (democratisation, individualisation) and religious and life and world philosophical trends. Each of these trends offers simultaneously exciting possibilities and frightening prospects to humanity. Perhaps the best, if imperfect instrument at the disposal of humanity is education. Purpose: The aim of this article is to argue the thesis that value education is a pivotal tool in equipping humanity for the twenty-first century, and to depict the possibilities and limits of education, particularly with respect to equip humanity with an appropriate hierarchy of values to negotiate the context of the twenty-first century. Design/Methodology/Approach: This is a position paper discussing a particular issue. The paper draws on the methodological tools of the scholarly field of Comparative and International Education. The concepts of values, values education, and theories on values and value education are clarified. Background: For the first time in his or her life, a child is brought into constant contact with others when he or she begins to attend school. In the process, the child as learner is exposed to a range of perspectives about society, and to what it means to be a member of a group and of society in general. In this process, the young person becomes acquainted with the intrinsic value system of society, which society expects the school to impart to the learners. School education and, in particular citizenship education, therefore, are value-based and -driven activities that ideally should assist learners to develop and express their own views about society, their place, task and role in society as future citizens. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to explicate the theoretical argument that four sets of basic values should form the substratum for a school's citizenship education curriculum or program, namely: the constitutional values of the nation, the basic and widely accepted ethical values, the relevant local community values, and values associated with global citizenship. Design/Methodology/Approach: This is a position paper in which the authors propound a core theoretical argument and subsequently attempt to defend their position on conceptual, theoretical and experiential grounds. Findings: Citizenship as such, and citizenship education should not be seen as fixed, final and static, but rather as situated in the following field of tension: on the one hand, the abovementioned four sets of values that seem to be widely accepted and stable, and on the other, values that are more personal, flu- id and conditional. The four of these sets of values mentioned above ideally should form the value substratum of the particular nation's citizenship education policies and citizenship education curriculum or program. Conclusion: The four sets of (moral) values discussed in this paper should ideally form a balanced mix that could favourably shape a state's citizenship education policy and citizenship education curriculum or program, and thereby lead to the formation of balanced future citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is twofold. It is firstly to map the international discourse and experience regarding the issue of language of learning and teaching in education. Secondly, the article focuses on the South African question regarding the issue of language of learning and teaching in educational institutions, by employing the international framework constructed in the first section for purposes of illumination, interpretation, and assessment. The language medium in education remains a contentious issue in education, also in the South African context. The comparative method that was used for doing the mapping, namely, to examine and draw potentially valuable insights and perspectives from comparable international situations, is widely used for illuminating societal issues, also in education. Schools were instituted for the first time around 3 000 BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt. During the first millennia in the history of these institutions, the dominant language of the political jurisdiction or entity in which the school was located was employed as the language of learning and teaching in schools. This was due to the political objectives of education and schooling as well as the social origins of the learners who attended the schools. Schools originated autochthonously in only a few places; most school systems in the world today can trace their roots back to the early mediaeval European prototype which was subsequently exported to the extra-European world by means of missionary activities and imperial (colonial) endeavours. It is important to keep this development in mind for an understanding of the subsequent course that the language of learning and teaching in schools followed. A departure from the mediaeval practice to use Latin as the language of learning and teaching in schools coincided with the Reformation in Western Europe in the sixteenth century, in particular the formation of nation-states in that part of the world since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The leaders of the Reformation promoted the use of the vernacular for reading and understanding the Bible, and for this reason agitated for the home language to become the language of teaching and learning in the schools. This ideal was never fully realised, however; even in Western Europe the dominant language of each nation was used as the language of teaching and learning. The notion of developing the vernacular as language of learning and teaching did not form part of the imperialist project of instituting schools in the colonies from the fifteenth century in the Americas and Asia, and from the nineteenth century in Sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, the official language of the colonial power in question was used as the language of learning and teaching in colonial schools. The empowerment of the vernacular to become the official language of the country, a hallmark of the formation of nation-states and of national education systems in the Global North, received at best scant attention or lip service when the nations of the Global South, especially in Africa (notably in Sub-Saharan Africa) and South Asia gained independence during the 1960s. The situation has since been exacerbated by the rise of English as international lingua franca in the past half century. The impact of this development can be detected in the education systems of the world, including those of the Global North: English has become a de facto universal second or third language in teaching and learning at most levels. English is also increasingly supplanting respectively French and Portuguese as languages of teaching and learning in institutions of education in francophone and lusophone Africa. This, as mentioned, is a direct result of the vernacular not having been developed and empowered to become the language of teaching and learning. The hegemonic position of English is also reinforced by widespread support for this language as medium of teaching and learning among parents. Parents are convinced that mastery of English will be advantageous for their children in the higher education context and later in the international commercial world. A plethora of scholarly investigations seem to indicate that the vernacular should be favoured as the language of learning and teaching in institutions of education. Their findings revolve around respect for human rights, including the right to use the home, mother or first language as medium of teaching and learning; the role of language of teaching and learning in ensuring that the vernacular maintains and even improves its status and currency in society; educational considerations, including the role that the mother language plays in cognitive development and the learning of the first language, the learning of a second language, and subsequently, the learning of English; also the issue of equality and equity in education, and the role and impact of the language of learning and teaching in the maintenance and production of human and social capital. In the second part of the article, the South African situation regarding the issue of language of teaching and learning is described, analysed, interpreted and assessed against the international framework outlined in the first part. The analysis and discussion presented reveal that the international considerations are valid for the issue of language of learning and teaching in South Africa as well. They also show that several contextual-ecological features of the South African pedagogical landscape cause the promotion of the vernacular as medium of teaching and learning to be of even greater urgency. These features include the poor output (achievement) levels of, and the concomitant high levels of attrition in the South African education system, the persistent unacceptably high unemployment rate, the high levels of social inequality, and the national priority of making education accessible to all. Recommendations are made as to how the development of the various vernaculars could be developed to become efficient media of teaching and learning. Two of the strategies that could be considered are to promote the use of the vernacular in teacher education, and to use some of the international aid that is being poured into the African continent for the purpose of developing the various vernaculars to grow into effective education media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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