Editorial introduction : situating the ‘worlds’ of Arab education : critical engagements

Abstract

This 2010 volume of the Routledge World Yearbook of Education takes up the question of Education in relation to the Arab world. It extends the work of the World Yearbook of Education series that, since 2005, has been interrogating the effects and implications of globalisation: for education; for education policy, practice and research; and for the world. The 2010 volume editors, André Elias Mazawi and Ronald G. Sultana, have broken new ground in the Routledge World Yearbook of Education by tackling a topic, ‘Arab education’, which can be linked to a distinct geographic region of the world. This breaks with tradition because the World Yearbook has always strived for a ‘world perspective’. Historically this ‘world-ness’ was achieved through country-based studies; a chapter from here, another from there. Since 2005, as series editors, we have moved on from this notion of ‘the world’ as a collection of countries to consider world-ness as a global space, within which agencies interact and relationships between agencies support flows of people, knowledge, money, goods and services, symbols, meanings. This way of understanding the world indicates that in addition to fixed spaces, like countries or regions, there are also movements of things and ideas, which connect up and influence spaces. These movements, and the reach of different agencies, extend across space and time, not just at one scale (ie. global, regional, national, local, individual) but also within and between many scales. This volume on Arab education continues this work by considering the significance of Education in the making of the Arab world. This work opens up fundamental questions about the notion of an ‘Arab world’ and how it might be named. It also explores what is involved in ‘Education’ when it is influenced, understood and represented by diverse agencies and flows that are located not only within the particular geographic space but also through relationships at and between different scales.