The Emerging Internationalization of Education Leadership and Policy Studies

The formal mission of the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations is “…to understand and enhance the context in which human learning takes place.”

Department faculty, staff, and students pursue this goal most intensely in domestic settings, e.g., undertaking research about or preparing students for employment in U.S. public and private schools, higher education institutions, and local, state, and federal government agencies.

However, LPO members increasingly also are engaged in international endeavors, teaching in foreign nations, providing personnel training, engaging in organizational consulting and policy advising, participating in visiting scholar and other research and teaching exchange programs, and conducting research in and preparing researchers for overseas settings. 

Most of these activities are reciprocal.  LPO faculty and students flow overseas for various education related endeavors.  An equal or greater number of international students and scholars routinely flow to LPO.  Additionally, increasingly LPO facilitates the flows of others such as the Metropolitan Nashville Public School principals engaged in an exchange program with Guangzhou Province in China and South China Normal University.  Also, a contingent of Tennessee superintendents visited in China in the summer of 2007, under the joint auspices of the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents (TOSS) and LPO.

In academic year 2006-2007, LPO faculty members were engaged in activities in, and LPO has graduate students and visiting scholars from, a total of 27 nations.

In academic year 2006-2007, LPO enrolled 24 graduate (M.Ed., Ed.D., and Ph.D.) students from nations other than the United States. This is approximately fifteen percent of LPO graduate enrollment.

Some of these international activities are formal, such as the United States federal government-sponsored Muskie Scholars, who regularly flow to LPO from the former Soviet Union or the Fulbright Fellows who flow from recent settings such as Georgia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Palestine, and the Peoples Republic of China. LPO also has formal arrangements with foreign universities such as East Kazakhstan State University, South China Normal University in Guangzhou, Beijing Normal University in Beijing, and nationwide professional training agencies such as the National Academy of Educational Administration in Beijing.

Some activities are less formal.  For example, each year, many LPO faculty routinely deliver addresses or undertake short-term instructional assignments overseas, and engage in policy advising to foreign governments and agencies.  In 2006-2007 these activities included advising and instructing in the following nations: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, The People’s Republic of China, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, and Viet Nam.

Each year the Peabody Journal of Education devotes an entire special issue to matters related to comparative education and overseas scholarship related to education.

LPO Graduate Students and Visiting Scholars from Foreign Nations - 2006-07

China:
Art Peng
Meisha Fang
Keke Liu
Ying Liu (graduated May 07)
 
Georgia:
Miriam Okadashvili (Muskie Scholar)
Lela Iosava (Muskie Scholar)
 
Japan:
Yoshiaki Hiranuma
 
Kazakhstan
Gulnara Namyssova
Saule Nurkenova

Korea:
Ki Se Lee
Jie-Eun Lee
Sun Chul Kim (scholarship from the Korean Government/Military)
Bosun Jang

Lebanon:
Samira Halabi (Fulbright; graduated May 07; in PhD program at Penn State)

Pakistan:
Naveed Saikh (Fulbright)

Russia:
Alexander Gorbunov

Singapore:
Mei Ling Kang (Fulbright)

Taiwan:
Hsueh Feng Kao
Yating Chang

Thailand:
Arisara Santiniyom (graduated May '07)
Saraporn Trikalsaransukh
 
Turkey:
Ozge Ezici Cetin
Savas Polat (graduated May '07)

Ukraine:
Nataliya Rumyantseva
Ararat Osipian