Global Reformations

Global Reformations offers a sustained, comparative, and interdisciplinary exploration of religious transformations in the early modern world. The volume explores global developments and tracks the many ways in which Reformation movements shaped relations of Christians with other Christians, and also with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and aboriginal groups in the Americas. Contributions explore the negotiations, tensions, and contacts that developed across social, gender, and religious lines in different parts of the globe, focusing on how different convictions about religious reform and approaches to it shaped social action and cross-confessional encounters. The essays explore the convergence of religious reform, global expansion, and governmental consolidation in the early modern world and examine the Reformation as a global phenomenon; the authors ask how a global frame complicates our understanding of what the Reformation itself was and offer a unique and up-to-date examination of the Reformation that broadens readers’ understanding in creative and useful ways. Demonstrating new research and innovative approaches in the study of cross-cultural contact during the early modern period, this volume is ideal for advanced undergraduates and graduates of early modern history, religious history, women's & gender studies, and global history.

This volume of primary sources brings together letters, memoirs, petitions, tracts, and stories related to religion and reform around the globe from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The common subject of the sources is the Reformation, and these texts demonstrate the themes and impacts of religious reform in Europe and around the globe. Scholars once framed the Reformation as a sixteenth-century European dispute between Protestant and Catholic churches and states, but now look expansively at connections and entanglements between different confessions, faiths, time periods, and geographical areas. The Reformation coincided with Europeans’ expanding reach across the globe as traders, settlers, and colonists, but the role that religion played in this drive has yet to be fully explored. These readings highlight these reformers’ engagements with Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and indigenous spirituality, and the entanglement of Christian reform with colonialism, trade, enslavement, and racism. Offering a sustained, comparative, and interdisciplinary exploration of religious transformations in the early modern world, this collection of primary sources is invaluable to both undergraduate and postgraduate students working on theology, the Reformation, and early modern society.

With contributions from Linda Darling-Hammond, Michael Fullan, Pasi Sahlberg, and Martin Carnoy, Global Education Reform is an eye-opening analysis of national educational reforms and the types of high-achieving systems needed to serve all students equitably. The collection documents the ideologically and educationally distinctive approaches countries around the world have taken to structuring their education systems. Focusing on three pairs of case studies written by internationally acclaimed experts, the book provides a powerful analysis of the different ends of an ideological spectrum----from strong state investments in public education to market-based approaches. An introductory chapter offers an overview of the theories guiding both neoliberal reforms such as those implemented in Chile, Sweden and the United States with efforts to build strong and equitable public education systems as exemplified by Cuba, Finland and Canada. The pairs of case studies that follow examine the historical evolution of education within an individual country and compare and contrast national educational outcomes. A concluding chapter dissects the educational outcomes of the differing economic and governance approaches, as well as the policy implications.

The current international system of institutions and governance groups is proving inadequate to meet many of today's most important challenges, such as terrorism, poverty, nuclear proliferation, financial integration, and climate change. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and UN were founded after World War II, and their structures of voting power and representation have become obsolete, no longer reflecting today's balance of economic and political power. This insightful book examines how to make such institutions more responsive and effective. Institutional reform is critically needed but currently in stalemate. A new push is needed from powerful nations acting together through a reformed and enlarged G-8 that includes emerging economies, such as China and India. Global challenges demand integrated approaches, with greater coordination among international institutions. Global Governance Reform argues that without reconstituting the Group of 8 summit into a larger, more representative group of leaders, with a new mandate to provide strategic guidance to the system of international institutions, the world will fall further behind in addressing global challenges. The path to global reform is defined by the need to act in coordinated ways on summit and institutional reform, and this book lights the way.

The sixteenth-century Reformation in all its forms and expressions sought nothing less than the transformation of the Christian faith. Five hundred years later, in today's context of world Christianity, the transformation continues. In this volume, editor Dale Irvin draws together a variety of international Christian perspectives that open up new understandings of the Reformation. In six chapters, contributors offer general discussions and case studies of the effects of the Protestant Reformation on global communities from the sixteenth century to the present. Together, these essays encourage a reading and interpretation of the Reformation that will aid in the further transformation of Christianity today. CONTENTS: Introduction 1. Jews and Muslims in Europe: Exorcising Prejudice against the Other Charles Amjad-Ali 2. Spaniards in the Americas: Las Casas among the Reformers Joel Morales Cruz 3. Women from Then to Now: A Commitment to Mutuality and Literacy Rebecca A. Giselbrecht 4. The Global South: The Synod of Dort on Baptizing the "Ethnics" David D. Daniels 5. The Protestant Reformations in Asia: A Blessing or a Curse? Peter C. Phan 6. The Modern Era: Contemporary Challenges in Light of the Reformation Vladimir Latinovic

A critical evaluation of the latest reform in Chinese law that engages legal scholarship with research of Chinese legal historians.

With contributions from Linda Darling-Hammond, Michael Fullan, Pasi Sahlberg, and Martin Carnoy, Global Education Reform is an eye-opening analysis of national educational reforms and the types of high-achieving systems needed to serve all students equitably. The collection documents the ideologically and educationally distinctive approaches countries around the world have taken to structuring their education systems. Focusing on three pairs of case studies written by internationally acclaimed experts, the book provides a powerful analysis of the different ends of an ideological spectrum----from strong state investments in public education to market-based approaches. An introductory chapter offers an overview of the theories guiding both neoliberal reforms such as those implemented in Chile, Sweden and the United States with efforts to build strong and equitable public education systems as exemplified by Cuba, Finland and Canada. The pairs of case studies that follow examine the historical evolution of education within an individual country and compare and contrast national educational outcomes. A concluding chapter dissects the educational outcomes of the differing economic and governance approaches, as well as the policy implications.

Global Education Reform presents an opportunity to reorganize, transform, and recapture misplaced human potential. The book advocates a new culture of the education process through the establishment of Student Concerned Review Councils (SCRCs) as a vehicle for global education reform in college and university communities. The proposed SCRC must be viewed as an active search engine for a global conduit to encourage chancellors, vice chancellors, presidents, professors, and ministers of education to be fully integrated in the SCRC process. The book notes that effective design and implementation of Information Technology Resource Service Centers (ITRSCs) on college and university campuses will definitely help students to reconnect with their lost potential, elevate their self-confidence, improve their inner satisfaction, develop their personal life and professional career, and restore dignity to the education community. The implementation of Information Technology Resource Service Centers (ITRSC), Programming Resource Technology Center (PTRC), Open Access Technology Resource Center (OATRC), Professional Development Technology Center (PDTC), Professional Development Technology Center (PDTC), Academic Faculty Resource Technology Center (AFRTC), Academic Research Technology Center (ARTC), Learning Resource Technology Center (LRTC), and Certification Resource Technology Center (CRTC) will enhance the understanding, importance, and advantages of information technology in the education process. The author sees the decay of the Nigerian educational system as a regrettable oversight and a deterrent to global education reform and the preparation, nurturing and education of future education leaders of the unified free world. The author asserts that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir Tafawa Balewa, General Aguiyi Ironsi, General Yakubu Gowon, Chief Obafemi Owolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Brigadier Udoakaha Esuene, and Governor Owelle Okorocha were patriotic, enduring, and outstanding education advocates for all citizens in Nigeria. A lifelong education is an instructive and enlightening route to wisdom, intellectual growth, and maturity; therefore, it is the authors assertion that combined and collaborative efforts are needed, as well as support from ministers of education and other politicians who are willing to allocate adequate financial resources that will enable privileged elites; chancellors, vice chancellors, presidents, professors to prepare future leaders of the education system in their formative years to establish an attitude of persistence, and self-confidence to cope with the demanding workforce and professional challenges of todays information technology society. The author submits that effective and efficient use of information technology as valuable data and voice transmission tools, e-mail, cell phones, Internet access as education instruction delivery apparatus, and communication system for global language barriers will definitely create a singular and mutually sovereign system for the successful development of global education reform.