The second session of the Asia Education Leader Course (AELC) Pre-Study Series 2026 was held Friday, June 26, 2026, and attended by over 35 students from four AELC partner institutions.

Associate Professor Will Brehm, of the University of Canberra, reframed ideas about “good education” in an inspiring lecture titled “What the Map Cuts Up: Comparative Education, Regional Memory, and the Politics of Knowledge in Asia.” Using the map as a metaphor for a constructed reality of what “good” education is and how it should be measured, Prof. Brehm argued that the maps were constructed as a political project by specific global powers, and that the structures supporting these maps have been losing legitimacy. The lecture introduced the dominant strand of comparative and international education as a political project that determines what is and is not seen, valued and measured.

In the discussion half of the Pre-Study, Prof. Brehm posed two questions which were discussed by students in breakout rooms:

Think of one example from your own country’s education system where a framework, benchmark, or policy model was produced outside your country and imported into it. What did that framework make visible in your system, and what did it leave invisible?

Your national curriculum tells one story about your country’s relationship with its neighbours in this region. What other stories exist, in your family, your community, your own memory, which the curriculum doesn’t tell? What does that gap reveal about the knowledge geo-body of comparative education in your context?

The group discussions yielded new insights from contexts across Asia and Latin America, with TESOL, PISA, International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement, the GPA system, STEAM education and QS rankings as instruments both shedding light on, and blocking view of, various aspects of learning and social reality. In discussion of the second question, the recent film Dear You (给阿嬷的情书) was a common theme, highlighting how the film, through a family story based on true accounts, tells a different historical narrative than that taught in the official curriculum.

The AELC Secretariat would like to express sincere gratitude to Prof. Brehm for the opportunity to view comparative and international education through a new lens.

The next and final Pre-Study Session for Summer 2026 will be held on FRI, July 17 from 16:30-18:30JST. We welcome Associate Professor Dhirapat Kulophas of Chulalongkorn University to deliver his lecture, “Education in Thailand: Current Landscape, Challenges and Future Directions.”

https://www.sed.tohoku.ac.jp/ireo/aelc/news/---id-500.html