Comparative and International Education Group University of Newcastle (CIEGUN) brings together a critical mass of established comparative researchers exploring global educational policies and alternatives for contemporary times.

Comparative and International Education (CIEGUN) group members

CIEGUN reserchers (front row) Dr Nisha Thapliyal, Dr Stephanie Bengtsson, Dr Tom Griffiths, Dr Zsuzsa Millei and A/Prof Linda Newman with post graduate and Honours students.

Challenging dominant policy paradigms: Enacting social justice

Comparative and International Educations programmatic focus is developed through inter-related research spokes, across geographical regions, educational sectors, and time periods, with a consistent focus on policy critique, the exploration of socially just alternatives, and interventions that systematically incorporate subaltern voices. We build on our established international collaborations, to enhance the dissemination, recognition and impact of the research as an integral part of the proposed intervention in global policy debates. Our program of research rests on an acknowledgement of the heightened levels of global uncertainty and instability in which policy challenges emerge, and the heightened potential for such interventions in this context to influence the shape of the future world-system.

Significance of the program

To impact positively on global futures, it is vital to examine the global flow of good practice educational policies that attend to problems associated with contemporary uncertainties and risks, and to scrutinies policy challenges and alternatives with a decisive aim to intervene. Comparative and International Education group, in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle,