Laura Perry PhD

This book examines various aspects of school segregation and their complex interrelations with policy, structure, and context in diverse settings. It advances the understanding of the causes, processes and consequences of school segregation around the globe.

Topics examined include student sorting between schools in marketized systems; the effects of school socioeconomic segregation on international tests of student achievement and the structures that shape cross-national variations; the impact of school choice on school segregation in Canada; school segregation and institutional trust in Chile; racial/ethnic and socioeconomic segregation in Brazil; and parental financial contributions as a cause and consequence of school segregation in Australia. The contributions highlight how selective schooling, private schooling, school funding, school choice, and school competition interact to shape school segregation, as well as the consequences of school segregation on a range of student outcomes. Through its embrace of diversity of methodological approaches, context and focus, this book stimulates new lines of research in an important and growing field.

Comparative Perspectives on School Segregation will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of comparative education, educational leadership and policy, educational research, ethnic studies, research methods, economics of education, sociology of education, history of education and educational psychology. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Since the fall of communism in Europe, educationists from both sides of the former Iron Curtain have sought opportunities to collaborate and exchange information. Despite the many strengths of post-communist educational systems, however, most Western scholars have expressed little interest in learning from or about their peers. Analysis of 220 scholarly texts written between 1989-2001 shows that the majority of Western authors believe post-communist schooling is inferior, outmoded and undemocratic. These claims, however, are rarely backed with empirical evidence and are instead the result of negative stereotypes of “Eastern Europe” as backwards and unprogressive. By cloaking their criticisms under the benign mantle of democracy, Western scholars can impose their notions of appropriate schooling without being seen as overtly ethnocentric. This analysis shows that scholarship about foreign educational systems can be influenced by stereotypical social constructions and can be a tool for asserting ethnocentric beliefs. As such it may be useful for educational comparativists and historians, as well as specialists of eastern and central Europe.