Understanding how knowledge is disseminated globally, how it has been interpreted, re-interpreted, and adopted in different national contexts over time, brings to the fore new inquiries. Such inquiries can not only be viewed from a perspective of shared global networks, but also within a context of international and transnational vantage points. It is against this background that the authors of this volume articulate a cross-disciplinary discourse concerning the global dissemination of the educational idea of the Workers' Faculties (rabochii fakultet), originating in 1919 in the USSR. These faculties stood as socio-political, socio-economic and cultural representations of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The mission of Workers’ Faculties was twofold. Firstly, the faculties had the task to provide the children of the workers and peasants with a prospect to pursue higher education, thereby equalising educational opportunities due to social and economic disparities. Secondly these faculties had the task to foster the idea of educating the „new socialist“ human being.

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned mission, the Workers’ Faculties system was very heterogeneous. That is, the Faculties’ institutionalisation differed from country to country. Thus, it is not surprising that much of the existing research into the various aspects of Workers’ Faculties was focussed on their institutionalisations in specific countries and are limited to certain periods.1

In contrast to the existing literature, the reviewed volume goes beyond single epochal and country specific analyses of the Workers’ Faculties. It provides a cross-cutting analysis by focussing on neo-institutionalism and educational borrowing and lending. In doing so, the reviewed volume provides an explanation at global level based on educational cooperation between socialist countries, which is an understudied area in the existing literature. Thus, the authors present a study which enhances not only our knowledge of educational cooperation between socialist countries, but also more importantly in regard to educational transfer in general.

The discourse evolves around two main focal points, namely the cooperation in education between socialist countries and globalization processes in the field of education, taking into account the respective geopolitical, and epochal developmental consideration. These considerations become the cornerstones and points of entry of the discussions, especially as the authors go deeper into the theoretical and methodological aspects of the concepts, which underpin the educational idea of Workers’ Faculties. Subsequently, the authors provide a succinct and well-developed methodological and dissemination analysis which leads to an epistemic nexus between neo-institutionalism and a transfer of educational ideas within the realm of Workers’ Faculties.

The volume is divided into 10 single- and co-authored chapters commencing with a delineation of existing research and an outline of the studies presented (Chapter 1). This is followed by a brief discussion concerning theoretical approaches in Chapter 2 and a methodological consideration and available resources in Chapter 3. Subsequently, in Chapter 4, Miethe and Piepiorka present an in-depth discussion of the Workers’ Faculties, from their inceptions in the USSR in 1919 to 1941 and in a context of developments in higher education. Chapter 5 takes this further by discussing the dissemination of the educational idea of Workers’ Faculties throughout the USSR, and in other countries, such as, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Mongolia, North Korea, China, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Mozambique. Chapters 6 to 9 present an in-depth discussion of the below cited case studies. These are followed by Tim Kaiser’s and Ingrid Miethe’s extensive and well-structured ‘theoretical conclusion’ in Chapter 10.

At the centre of this volume are four Workers’ Faculties case studies and their respective epochs. These studies include Workers’ Faculties in the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1963 (by Ingrid Miethe), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1956 to 1964 (by Tim Kaiser), the Republic of Cuba from 1962 to1969 (by Tobias Kriele) and the Republic of Mozambique from 1983 to 1992 (by Alexandra Piepiorka). The discussions in these chapters provide thought-provoking theoretical and methodological reflections based on three overarching questions: (p. i) What national traditions and international transfers are responsible for the emergence of these institutions? (p. ii) What form did these institutions take in the various countries, and what functions did they serve under local conditions? (p. iii) What general statements can be made about educational transfer on the base of the case studies and the possible comparisons?

In response to these questions the authors are drawing extensively on existing research2 and present an original and comprehensive discussion, which deserves the attention of educators, educational policymakers, administrators and historians, and those working in and researching the global transference of ideological ideas. However, one of the important points, worthy of our specific attention is the unpacking of the above cited case studies together with the problematisation of the multi-dimensionality of transference of the ideological underpinnings governing the Workers’ Faculties. This is set within a global context and between the developed North and the developing South. In doing so, the authors successfully address the North-South divide problematics found in much of the germane academic literature. They bring to the fore two important issues. Firstly, they highlight the country-specific national adaptations of the Workers’ Faculties as an educational idea, and secondly, they show the workings of a global interconnectivity and transference of an educational idea. Using this nexus, the authors successfully respond to the above-mentioned overarching question within a country specific and the global North-South parameters.

The discussion advances beyond the mere focus on case studies. The authors emphasise the theoretical and methodological underpinnings, and a neo-institutional and a global transference of the educational idea. Thus, the discourse takes on an increasingly sophisticated as well as a refined and complex quintessence of the Workers’ Faculties in its various distinct national forms and epochs. This, as the authors argue, attests to the fact that the idea of the global dissemination of the Workers’ Faculties is not to be understood as leading to a uniform, but to complex and diversified educational constructs.

For example, the Workers’ Faculties in Vietnam and Mozambique differ from the those in the GDR and Cuba, in as far as the former two emerged from a colonial era. Thus, firstly Vietnam and Mozambique had to (re-)establish national post-colonial institutions, and secondly the Workers’ Faculties had to provide education for workers and peasants at a level of literacy. In contrast, in the GDR and to a certain extent in Cuba national education systems existed for centuries. The workers and peasants in both countries had certain level of literacy and were able to provide post-basic education at an advanced level. In either case the Workers’ Faculties played a significant role in exerting political power within existing and emerging education institutions. This led to a transfer processes analysis of the educational ideas and is developed further by highlighting direct and indirect transfer, autonomous variances amongst Workers’ Faculties and a discourse of Marxism as a shared ideology.

To conclude, this volume presents strong analytical and diverse discussions of Workers’ Faculties, which is an important and as yet clearly under-researched field in education and the respective academic literature. This book is illuminating in terms of work by the authors who succeeded to hold together different settings, topics and methodologies in a captivating discursive manner. Thus, this book is a major contribution to an understanding of how general trends and features of a global educational idea that underpin the realisation of Workers’ Faculties were realised and for this it deserves our full attention. As such it is an indispensable contribution to the history of Workers’ Faculties in former and present-day socialist countries.

Notes:
1 For detailed discussion see: John Connelly, Captive University: The Sovietization of East Germany, Czech a Polish higher Education 1945–1956, London 2000; Gita Steiner-Khamsi (ed.), The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending, New York 2004; Károli Urbán, The June 1953 Political Turn and Hungary’s Intelligentsia, in: Gabor Donokos (ed.) Études historiques hongroises, Budapest 1985.
2 See for example: Gita Steiner-Khamsi (ed.), The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending, New York 2004; Roger Dale, Globalisierung in der Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft re-visited: Die Relevanz des Kontexts, in: Marcelo Parreira do Amaral / S. Karin Amos (eds.), Geschichte, Theorie, Methode und Forschungsfelder, Münster 2012, pp. 171–188; Leon Tiikly, Globalisation and Education in the Postcolonial World: Towards a Conceptual Framework, in: Comparative Education 37 (2001), pp. 151–171; Paul DiMaggio / Walter W. Powell, The Iron Cage Revisited. Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality, in: Paul DiMaggio / Walter W. Powell (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organisational Analysis, Chicago 1991.