Comparative and International Education Society | 61st Annual Conference

Problematizing (In)Equality: The Promise of Comparative and International Education
Atlanta, Georgia – March 5-9, 2017

To problematize is, in one sense, to engage critically with the world, to see things as problems, and to question what we often take for granted as common sense. In another sense, to problematize is to analyze how some things — and not others — come to be seen as ‘problems’ in the first place and how this process engenders certain solutions and possibilities while foreclosing others.

In setting “Problematizing (In)Equality: The Promise of Comparative and International Education” as the theme of CIES 2017, we direct attention to the multiple ways that researchers and practitioners in comparative and international education both address and neglect issues of equality and inequality in education. To present this challenge as one of problematizing “(In)Equality” is to suggest that the issue is more complex than one of binary absolutes. It invites us to consider the ways schooling, education reform and indeed comparative research itself may produce and perpetrate inequalities. And it asks us to address the circuits of exclusion and inclusion that in historical and contemporary terms impede and advance educational justice on a global scale.

Under this broad heading we invite proposals for papers, panel sessions, roundtable paper sessions and poster sessions that use comparative and international education work to address the problem and problematization of (in)equality.