Dialogues and collaboration across boundaries: New methods for comparative education

This chapter is grounded in Lillo Kang and McIntosh's recent experiences co-editing a book, Enacting Equitable Global Citizenship Education in Schools: Lessons from Dialogue Between Research and Practice (2023). In that book endeavor, they experimented with a unique way of theorizing and writing by “mashing up” authors, a mix of practitioners and academics from around the world, to discuss different aspects of Global Citizenship Education. The book aimed to examine theories and practices through critical lenses, with its own theoretical foundations in Bhabha's concepts of third space and Freire's promotion of dialogic methods. It centered dialogue in both the writing process and final book form. Book chapters unconventionally included large segments of written dialogues between authors in the written text to allow individual perspectives, and the dissonance across them, to be more visible to readers. In this chapter, Lillo Kang and McIntosh reflect on their experiences facilitating collaborations between 36 authors from six continents, and the challenges and benefits of such multinational and cross-silo collaborations. They also reflect on the value of purposeful and intentional dialogues across boundaries, not just in the promotion of equitable Global Citizenship Education, but in any concerns within the broader field of comparative education.