No abstract

No abstract

Inspired by his meeting with Nigel Grant at the beginning of the Nineties the author explains how this influenced and accompanied his career as a Comparative Education researcher and a teacher of Special Needs in Education, with a close, personal examination of the cultural themes of personal identity. Using an anecdotal, colloquial style, he demonstrates the importance, if not the necessity, for all Comparative Education and Intercultural researchers, in parallel to their research regarding the external and exterior aspects of their subject (comparison of different school systems, of educational reforms, of philosophies of education, etc.), to carry out a study into their own interior, personal aspects that will help them to define their own cultural identity and possible, inner ‘diversities’. In the author's opinion, understanding and practising such a ‘interior route to Comparative Education’ can only lead to a more precise, aware use of those terms employed when describing the objects of external research.

According to a progressive interpretation of human development, girls' education should form an integral part of a full democratic system. Nevertheless, girls' education is threatened and attacked in many ways in current societies, be they authoritarian or democratic societies, developing or developed ones. In this article the two authors, both educators and researchers in education in Catania, Sicily, introduce their educational activities regarding the defence and promotion of girls' education for development and social change. Three activities are at the core of their current, local and global commitment to the issue: continual seminars on Intercultural Geo-History (with a special focus on the ongoing wars), operating simultaneous Skype connections (the so-called 'Orbital Classroom'); the Intercultural Prayer Against War; and the campaign 'Etna, Volcano of Peace'. The article provides some details and describes partial successes of these educational activities led by a consistent group of girls, and explains how the activities relate to both interculturalism and global democracy theory.

No abstract