Overview and Objective:This special issue of Comparative and International Education/Éducation Comparée et Internationale (CIE/ÉCI) provides an opportunity to mobilize research completed on innovation, leadership, sustainability, and system change in the Caribbean by Caribbean researchers and/or in partnership with other researchers, including those from Canada. Researchers and universities in the Caribbean have maintained long-standing partnerships with Canadian researchers and universities. The special issue provides an opportunity for south-south or south-north research collaboration and mobilization. A focus on comparative and international education provides opportunities for researchers and educational system leaders in both the Caribbean and Canadian contexts (and beyond) to learn from each other and to harness their collective efforts for improved educational outcomes for all students. The commitment of CIE/ÉCI to open-access publishing, without fees to authors, and in English and French, will ensure that the published articles are widely available throughout the Caribbean, Canada, and beyond.
The overall objective of the special issue is to build or enhance capacity for innovation, leadership, and sustainability in education systems by mobilizing research on promising and evidence-based solutions from the Caribbean. The special issue will enable scholars and educational practitioners to share research findings that can inform and contribute to innovation in the region and beyond. It will also provide a forum for dialogue to explore how stakeholders working at different levels and across different countries are addressing educational barriers and pursuing opportunities to improve teaching, learning, and school leadership. The special issue will facilitate research exchange and knowledge mobilization within and between global south/north institutions.
This special issue will focus on how teachers, school leaders, and system administrators can nurture innovation and sustainability in education in the Caribbean from a ground-up approach (i.e., teacher-led innovation projects) and top-down approach (i.e., system and school strategic prioritization and facilitation of innovation projects).
Guest Editors:
Dr. Steve Sider (Co-lead Editor, English): Wilfrid Laurier University
Dr. Jhonel Morvan (Co-lead Editor, French): Université de l’Ontario français
Guest Editorial Team:
Angel Caglin: The University of West Indies (Cave Hill, PhD student), Caribbean Innovation and Leadership Lab
Dr. Samuel Charles: Université de Montréal
Dr. Colleen Loomis: Wilfrid Laurier University, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Dr. Bephyer Parey: The University of West Indies (St. Augustine)
Dr. S. Joel Warrican: The University of West Indies (Cave Hill)
Dr. Ann-Marie Wilmot: The University of West Indies (Mona)
Dr. Carrie Wright: Wilfrid Laurier University, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Detailed Description, Background Information, and Rationale:
Improving the quality of teaching and the learning outcomes of students in low- and middle- income countries has proven stubbornly difficult (Loomis et al., 2018). In the Caribbean, education has been through multiple reforms over the last 25 years. Many of these initiatives are implemented as short term projects and are shaped by the changing interests of external donors, non-governmental organizations, or elected governments (Mertens, 2024; Jennings, 2024). The success of these reforms has been inconsistent across the region and within individual states (Sider et al., 2021). Some reform initiatives have been imposed on Caribbean countries by donors without testing that the assumptions underpinning the reform’s success are aligned with the local environment. In other cases, reform initiatives have been stopped abruptly so that new initiatives can be started, without evaluating the impact of changes or capitalizing on the learning available through the previous change project (Anglade et al., 2018). Many countries continue to struggle with long-standing issues such as delivering education in rural/remote settings, attending to gender differences in achievement, and high rates of illiteracy (Sider et al., 2024; World Bank, 2025).
Effective and equitable education is a vital pathway to economic stability and prosperity for low- and middle-income countries. The Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution contends that at the current pace of change, it will take over 100 years for the education levels of children in lower income countries to catch up to the education level of children today in wealthy countries (Winthrop & McGivney, 2017). They argue that innovation is needed to make large, transformative changes to education systems in low- and middle-income countries. Innovation in education requires a multitude of stakeholders, including ministries of education, university pre-service education programs and teacher training colleges, research institutes, civil society organizations, and teacher associations.
Social innovation approaches have gained in popularity over the last twenty years and are widely recognized as a valuable tool for achieving social change. The term social innovation refers to “new solutions (products, services, models, markets, processes, etc.) that simultaneously meet a social need (more effectively than existing solutions) and lead to new or improved capabilities and relationships and better use of assets and resources” (The Young Foundation, 2012, p. 18). Social innovation in education can appear as a new pedagogic theory, methodological approach, teaching technique, assessment method, instructional tool, learning process, or institutional structure that, when implemented, produces a significant change in teaching and learning, which leads to better student outcomes (Giesecke & Schartinger, 2024). Different forms of leadership (e.g., positional, informal, emergent) intersect with innovation efforts to enable or discourage these efforts (Sliwaka et al., 2024).
Comparative and international education is critical in this process of understanding innovation in education since, “…comparative education offers a starting point for improving our education systems and our classroom practices. It also challenges us to think broadly about the link between local practices and global issues, and to explore the overlapping values and social systems that underpin the educational enterprise itself” (Bickmore et al., 2017, p. 2). Local contexts can inform broader knowledge and vice versa. Sustainable change is often best pursued through locally and regionally driven efforts that identify relevant issues and leverage the assets on the ground to make that innovative change happen (Brissett, 2018). The lessons learned in these contexts can illuminate opportunities in other locations.
Themes and Questions:
Contributing authors may address the following themes amongst others:
- Teacher-led innovation projects
- Human-centered design
- Innovation in assessment, evaluation, and monitoring
- The intersection of innovation and inclusive education
- Role of school and system leadership in fostering innovative practices
- Impact of innovation on educational outcomes
- Theoretical and conceptual considerations (e.g., self-determination theory, agency, transformative leadership theory)
- Innovative solutions to mitigate teacher migration (“brain drain”)
- Innovations in policy development, implementation, monitoring
- Innovation and its relationship to the Sustainable Development Goals
Contributing authors may address the following questions (and other related questions):
- What does the research base indicate about innovation in education in the Caribbean?
- How can teacher-led innovation projects lead to effective and long-term educational improvements?
- What are the experiences of scholars and educational practitioners in fostering educational innovation in different contexts in the Caribbean?
- What are the lessons being learned from a comparative education perspective about innovation, sustainability, and system change in education?
- How can case studies on innovation in education in the Caribbean be used to mobilize innovative practices in diverse contexts?
- How can human-centered design initiatives inform educational reform efforts?
- What innovative practices in low-resource contexts might be identified to support educational practices in other contexts?
- What is the role of school and system leaders in fostering innovation and sustainability in education?
- What is the interplay of governments, schools, universities, and other agencies in fostering innovation in education in the Caribbean?
- In what ways, do teacher education programs (pre-service and/or in-service) encourage or inhibit innovative educational practices?
- How might artificial intelligence be used to stimulate and/or scale innovation?
- In what ways can research on innovation and sustainability in education better inform approaches to education in Canada and beyond?
- What are some potential or current obstacles to innovation in education in the Caribbean?
Timelines and Processes:
- August 1, 2025: Submission deadline for abstracts. Abstracts should contain a maximum 250 words (including at least 5 key references) and must be sent directly (NOT through the CIE journal site) to Dr. Steve Sider, the co-lead editor of the special issue (ssider@wlu.ca). Abstracts should include a brief description of the research study (or conceptual framework) that will be the focus of the proposed manuscript, key literature/conceptual components, key findings and discussion items, and at least one sentence which identifies the relevance of the manuscript to international and comparative education.
- September 1, 2025: Invitations for full manuscript submission will be sent to selected authors. An invitation to submit a full manuscript does not guarantee publication. Final editorial decisions will be made following peer review of the manuscripts. Submissions will follow the journal guidelines (e.g., 8,000 words max, APA format, etc.) available here: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/cie-eci/about/submissions#authorGuidelines
- November 15, 2025: Full manuscript submission deadline
- December 15, 2025: Reviewer feedback and decisions received
- December 31, 2025: Decisions and reviewers’ feedback will be sent to authors
- February 15, 2026: Revised manuscripts due from authors
- March 15, 2026: Editors’ feedback of revised manuscripts returned to authors.
- April 15, 2026: Final revisions must be received; manuscripts will be moved into production as received.
- SPRING 2026: Special issue published early June.
Questions?
Please contact Dr. Steve Sider, the co-lead editor of the special issue (ssider@wlu.ca).
Information about the journal for authors can be found here: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/cie-eci/information/authors