Contributors are drawn from a wide range of professional and academic backgrounds representing national governments, international agencies, research bodies, policy makers, researchers and practitioners. All have extensive first-hand experience of the issues and contexts that they deal with. Together they report upon original field research, theoretically informed analyses, political perspectives and recent professional and practical experience. Specific national contexts considered in depth include the European states of Estonia, Poland and Germany, the new Republic of South Africa, contemporary Brazil, the transitional phases of Hong Kong and Macau as ‘remnants of empire’, and the small states of Eritrea and Belize. In broad scope the volume highlights the tensions that exist between powerful global agendas and efforts to improve the quality and relevance of educational provision in vastly different sociocultural contexts. As such, the book will be of direct interest to a wide range of researchers, students, policy makers, consultants and development agency personnel involved with comparative and international studies in education and across the social sciences.