NOCIES Pre-Conference Early Career Research Workshop, October 9th 2019
Jointly sponsored by the International and Comparative Education Research Group, ICER@SU,Stockholm University, and the Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo.
The interdisciplinary research field of international and comparative education focuses on theintersection between pedagogy, policy and practice within and across global contexts. The traditionin the field involves the close investigation of transnational, regional, local and institutional
dimensions of educational development, planning, delivery and assessment. Researchers in thisfield apply analytic units of comparison on for example, societal, locational, or individual
dimensions to study the transversal of educational place and space.
This Pre-conference Workshop brings together established and new international researchers for
professional networking and sharing of skills. The focus is on recognition, regeneration and renewalof the methodologies and analytic methods supporting and enriching comparative educational
inquiry.
The workshop offers inspirational keynotes and hands-on workshops that allow for close encounterswith empirical approaches and comparative analytic skills training. Participants will learn new datacollection- and instrumental techniques and new ways in which to operationalise a comparative
research rationale. We invite early career and postgraduate researchers to join our engaging teamof experts for a full day program focusing on comparative empirical investigation.
The event is free of charge and provided as an add-on preference to the NOCIES Conference.
www.NOCIES.org ICER@SU provides lunch and refreshments for all participants. Places arelimited so get in early!
Registration is individual, and is due by September 10, 2019 at:https://simpleeventsignup.com/private_event/152659/24c4e8bdc4
Upon arrival, participants may register for one of the parallel workshops (A, B or C).

Program structure
8.30
Arrival (Museum of Natural History, Lilla Hörsalen)
9
Welcome ceremony (Lilla Hörsalen, MNH)
9.30-10.30
Keynote 1. Professor Anthony Welch (Lilla Hörsalen, MNH)
10.30
Morning tea
11-12
Keynote 2. Professor Elaine Unterhalter (Lilla Hörsalen, MNH)
12-13
lunch
13-15
Workshop A (JS)Workshop B (MM)Workshop C (CM)Room (1508)
Room (1708)
Room (2527)
15-15.30
Afternoon tea
15.30-17
Workshop A (JS)Workshop B (MM)Workshop C (CM)Room (1508)
Room (1708)
Room (2527)
17-17.30
Closing address (2403)
18DepartureKeynote I. Anthony Welch,Professor of Education, University of Sydney, Australia
Title: A Comparative Life?
The field of Comparative Education has evolved considerably over recent decades, from its
largely humanistic post WWII origins, to a sprawling field of competing methodologies, andadherents. The decade of the 1960s represented perhaps the apogee of faith in the potential ofscience to solve problems in comparative education, a broadly positivist conviction, whosegenesis can be traced back to the very earliest efforts, by figures such as Marc-Antoine Jullie nde Paris in the early 19th century. The subsequent rejection of the positivist faith as the base foranalytic and policy prescriptions in Comparative Education, issued in an array of alternatives,
including critical ethnography, ethnomethodology, world systems theory, post-colonial theory,and varieties of post-modernism. Each had their proponents; each had their critics.
As well as this methodological pluralism (something not new to the field), the development ofinternational agencies (UNESCO, OECD, ADB, World Bank, inter alia) has also changed thefield, both because of their policy prescriptions (often ultimately derivative of some form of
human capital theory), as also the substantial databases that are associated with these agencies.
(Just reflect briefly, for example, on the impact of the OECDs PISA on education systemsworldwide!). The increasing ubiquity of ICT’s is also re-shaping how and where the work canbe done.
All in all, these developments have led to a much larger and more diverse field (the most recentCIES conference held in April 2019 in San Francisco, attracted 3,600 registrations). A majorpart of that growth has come from Asia – where comparative education is growing vigorous ly.
Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong are all experiencing a surge of interest, while theJapan CIES has more than one thousand members. Overall, while professionalization isevident, an increasing diversity of backgrounds is leading people into the field.
The presentation will offer a personal lens on these decades of change and development, asexperienced by a long term specialist in the field, who could not have imagined all those years
ago, when starting to study the field at the University of London, how the subsequent decadeslong journey through the field, would turn out.
Professor Welch specialises in national and international policy and practice, principally ineducation, and cross-cultural analysis and research. He has extensive experience in many
countries, including in the Asia Pacific, and has published widely, contributing numerous
analyses of issues such as cross-cultural interactions; rural education, comparative researchmethods in education; and practical reform affecting multiculturalism, indigenous minorities,
international students, higher education reforms, internationalisation of higher education in theAsia Pacific, and changes to the academic profession.

Keynote II. Elaine Unterhalter
Professor, UCL Institute of Education, UK
Title: Women, gender, equality and comparative education: Some reflections

The intertwined fields of comparative education and education and international developme nt
have been enormously generative for scholarship on the education of women and girls, andexamination of ideas about gender, intersecting inequalities, and rights. This highlights theneed for consideration of distributive and other features of work on equality and education.
But, in noting the niche accorded this area of inquiry, I want to pose some questions about how
this work has developed historically and what some of the current possibilities are for growth,connection and critique.
The talk will start with some consideration of the moment I began work on these issues, in thelate 1970s, situating this historically, and drawing out some of the considerable developmentsthat have since taken place, and the autobiographies of some of the inspiring analysts andpractitioners.
In the second part of the discussion I will turn to some consideration of the connections between
policy work on girls’ education and gender equality, its relationship with academic researchand some of problematic areas that need consideration in developing communities of practiceand critique.

Elaine Unterhalter is Professor of Education and International Development and Co-Directorof the Centre for Education & International Development at University College London
Institute of Education. She is the Principal Investigator on the Accountability for Gender
Equality and Education (AGEE) project and has written widely on gender issues in education.
Her current concerns are with education, poverty and global social justice.

Workshop A. Dr Jonas Scharfenberg, Ludwig Maximillian’s University, Germany
Empirical research in transnational contexts. Challenges, limitations and solutions regarding
the use of quantitative instruments in international settings.
This workshop focuses on identifying and aligning comparative content in data instruments forapplication across different country settings. Participants will learn how to preserve meaning
within data instruments when adapting these to language and country variations.
Dr. Jonas Scharfenberg is a postdoctoral researcher at LMU Munich, Germany. His researchinterests include professionalization of teachers, intercultural school development and career
choice with a special focus on comparative and international methodologies.
Workshop B: Dr Malgorzata Malec Rawinski, Stockholm University, Sweden
Qualitative comparative methods, ethnography and biographical approaches.
In this interactive workshop participants will learn to analyse case study data collected in
multiple countries and cross-country contexts. The workshop will make use of authentic
biographical data collection and anlytic examples.
Dr Malgoszata Malec Rawinski is a senior lecturer in Education at Stockholm Univers ity
where she teaches on the master program in comparative and international education. Her
research focuses on adult and life long education and the learning of older adults.

Workshop C: Dr Charles Matthies, Finnish Institute for Educational Research,
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Large-scale secondary data in international and comparative education.
In this interactive workshop participants will learn about and how to address issues in usinglarge-scale data collected by secondary sources (i.e. governments, NGOs, IGOs, etc.).
Additionally, time will be devoted to exploring a number of sources of large-scale data that canbe used in international and comparative research.
Dr. Charles Mathies is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow based at the Finnish Institutefor Education Research in the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). His research focuses of therole of global markets, politics, and infrastructures in the movement of knowledge, data, andpeople across borders.

A warm welcome!!
ICER@SU Organising Committee
Meeri Hellstén

Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg

Ulf Fredriksson

https://www.edu.su.se/english/research/research-groups/international-studies

Directions
http://www.nrm.se/en/besokmuseet/inforbesoket/hittahit.49.html